


Anything Your Heart Desires

by blackrabbit42



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Fairy Tale Retellings, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 04:21:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4207737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrabbit42/pseuds/blackrabbit42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you wish up on a star, makes no difference who you are… unless you are a vampire in love with a human, that is. Jared hasn’t been a vampire long enough to completely stop caring about things, but even so, he’s baffled by how strongly he’s drawn to Jensen the first time he sees him. One quick visit with The Blue fairy, and he’s on his way to becoming human. It’s not as easy as he thought it would be, and his newly minted cricket-friend Chad isn’t helping matters at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anything Your Heart Desires

**Author's Note:**

> Written for spn_j2_bigbang. If you'd like to see the art associated with this fic, it can be found at: http://dulcetine.livejournal.com/191371.html I also have a pinterest page for Jensen's workshop: https://www.pinterest.com/ikemiker/wood/

 

**Fic title:** Anything Your Heart Desires

**Author name:** blackrabbit42

**Artist name:** dulcetine

**Genre:** RPF

**Pairing:** J2

**Rating:** NC-17

**Word count:** ~21K

**Warnings:** Somnophilia, non-con (of the somnophilia and mind-control variety), gore, character death

**Summary:** When you wish up on a star, makes no difference who you are… unless you are a vampire in love with a human, that is. Jared hasn’t been a vampire long enough to completely stop caring about things, but even so, he’s baffled by how strongly he’s drawn to Jensen the first time he sees him. One quick visit with The Blue fairy, and he’s on his way to becoming human. It’s not as easy as he thought it would be, and his newly minted cricket-friend Chad isn’t helping matters at all.

 

 

 

++++++++

 

The thing that really sucks about being a vampire, if you will pardon the pun, is that you stop caring about things. Jared pulls himself out of the cold and clammy pile of sleeping vampire limbs and wipes the drool from the corner of his lips. He had been sleeping with his head on what's-his-name’s potbelly. Probably has an imprint of his god-damned bellybutton on his cheek. Gross.

 

This is a bigger problem for him as a relatively new vampire than it is for the older ones, because they don’t care that they don’t care. He, on the other hand, still cares some of the time. Like when he’s hungry. When he’s fed, well then, he might just lurch drunkenly off into the nest and not care if his head is resting on—the name comes back to him now—Johnson’s bloated gut, not care if his hand rests between that jerk’s meaty thighs as he drifts off for a couple of month’s sleep.

 

But now that he’s woken, hungry—no, _starving_ —he cares. He cares _a lot._ Ugh. Full body shivers and heebee-jeebie dance. Some of the older vamps that are lounging around the nest half awake see him do it. But guess what? _They don’t care._

 

He’s got to get out of here. Away from the scent of months-old morning breath and that terrible gas that Henry gets when he guzzles down too much B-positive. Jared heads for the pantry to see what they’ve got. Did he mention he’s starving?

 

They live in an old Victorian house in the center of Gastown. A plaque out front declares that this was the home of one of the original founding fathers of Vancouver, but that it’s closed for restoration. They actually do pay a maintenance crew quite a bit of money to keep the grounds well kept and the structure under good repair; they just never let them see what’s at the bottom of the stairs—the pantry.

 

 With the blackout shades, he can’t tell what time it is. But when he finds himself more or less alone in the lower rooms of the house, he suspects it must be daylight out. He presses the indiglo button on his watch, silently thanking the victim—no, scratch that, _donor_ he lifted it from. Yep. Three o’clock in the afternoon. He also notes that he’s been asleep longer than he’s ever been before: six months. See? That _worries_ him. The veterans will tell him that he’ll get bored quick enough, and sleeping is a good way to pass the time, and that the longer you sleep, the better. But Jared is still young enough to feel like his life is passing him by. Six months? Damn.

 

He can smell it now—snacks in the pantry. His nostrils flare and his sluggish pulse quickens, sloshing his old tired blood around his veins like oil that desperately needs to be changed, or at the very least, topped off. And whatever it is in there, it smells _good_.

 

The pantry has always creeped Jared right the fuck out. He’d been turned in the early eighties, the golden age of slasher flicks, and he can’t help feeling like Jason or Freddy is going to jump out at him from behind the racks one of these days. It had taken some getting used to, seeing those bodies laid out on the shelves like that. But, hungry was hungry. You had to eat.

 

The smell today, damn. If Jason or Freddy is hiding out in the pantry, they’d better be prepared for a fight, because whatever is in there today, it has Jared’s name all over it.

 

Jared flicks on the light, careful to close his eyes first, and then slowly open them so they won’t burn with the sudden brightness. He typically doesn’t need the light, but something is pulling at him, and he’s curious.

 

As his eyes adjust, he makes his way around the room, hardly glancing at the donors. They aren’t the thing calling him. A few dead ones, ick. No one cleans up after themselves in this place. One girl who’s awake, struggling silently against her zip ties and gag. Jared hates that, hates the way her eyes grow wide with fear as he approaches. He pulls her gag aside and places his mouth over hers, lets his vapor glands express. She’s out in less than a second. His vapor is probably concentrated from six months of disuse.

 

Everyone else seems to be in good condition. He pushes a pair of dangling legs back onto the shelf as he passes, still searching. The tantalizing scent is making the skin prickle on the back of his neck. He turns the corner down the third aisle, where Lucy keeps her dogs. Jared privately thinks that Lucy is a sicko, but hey, there’s no accounting for taste.

 

It’s stronger here, and now it isn’t just the scent that draws him. He can feel the pull on his blood, like a magnet. He listens carefully. He can hear the sound of the donors rustling slightly as they twitch now and then in suspended animation. And Christ, that 300-pound slab of meat that’s no doubt Johnson’s personal snack bar is whistling through his nose like a freight train. Someone needs to get that guy a couple of Breathe-Rite Strips. But still, through all that racket, Jared can single out the breath of one particular donor, the one he’s looking for. It sounds like, jeez, he doesn’t know. It sounds like something that makes him feel calm. The ocean. A lullaby. The sound the moon makes as it turns.

 

Which is weird, because—

 

Holy weeping Nosferatu. There he is. Jared’s knees actually go a little weak when he sees him, no lie. Something primal that he can’t put a name to instantly fills his head with the word _mine._ He reaches out, fingers trembling, and pulls down the man’s gag. He’s deep asleep, no danger there, but Jared has to see his mouth. The lips are plush, slightly open in sleep, the breath that issues from them is a heady mix of toothpaste and Jameson Irish Whiskey. Damn, this guy is _fresh._ Like, brought-in-last-night fresh.

 

 

Jared has to see everything. He runs his fingers through the short, tawny hair, and the scent of some sort of herbal shampoo (probably conditioner too, judging by how soft) drifts up to meet his flared nostrils. Pushes up the guy’s sleeves and nearly weeps when he sees the arterial cords on the inner forearm. He ducks his head down, fangs extended, but then hesitates. Rests his hand on the stomach, feeling it rise and fall with each breath. Thinks.

 

Blood is like a soothing drug. Something that makes all the little irritants and agitations of life fade away. When he’s hungry, he’s closest to the way he was when he was still human; with the wants and needs and the bare vestiges of human emotions. If he feeds on this guy right now, he’s going to drain him dry, or nearly so, and then he’ll be back up in the nest, sated and sleeping in the pile without a care. When he wakes up, this guy will be long gone. Jared is hungry enough to be feeling possessive, greedy. He stands there, undecided. While he thinks, he absentmindedly strokes the man’s stomach. Feels like a god-damned brick wall. Jared teases his hand down into the loose gap between the donor’s jeans and his hip.

 

Okey-Dokey, that settles that. Jared is taking this donor the hell out of there. Because if anyone else so much as _thinks_ about even _licking_ this guy, Jared’s going to have to invent some new fangled way to fucking kill the fuck out of a vampire. This donor is _his._

He rolls the donor onto his side, facing away, and _bingo_! Wallet still in the pocket. License reads: _Jensen Ackles._ Address: _1642 Whalen Street, Vancouver._

 

_Jensen._ Jared breathes the name through his lips, tastes it, fingers working everywhere on _Jensen’s_ body, reading the history there, matching it to the name, learning. He smells wood shavings and sweat. Feels the unyielding muscles of the forearms. Touches the line where the skin turns white just below _Jensen’s_ belt. Caresses the calluses on _Jensen’s_ palms. Mentally pictures Whalen Street, and the kinds of houses there and the people who live in them.

 

Jensen’s a carpenter. But something else too. Something… finer. Jared can’t quite put his finger on it. Doesn’t matter, he’ll learn soon enough. For now, he’s got to stash Jensen somewhere they can be alone until nightfall. There’s a bedroom on the third floor of the old Victorian that should be empty. Jared rolls Jensen off the shelf and hefts him over his shoulder. He’s very, very careful to keep his fangs retracted, because Jensen’s bare hip is pressed up against his cheek and one tiny slip, just the tiniest puncture, will send him over the edge, and he’s got to keep control. He has plans.

 

A few of the other vampires who are awake gaze at Jared through hooded eyes as he makes his way through the parlor towards the central staircase, but none disturb their own languor more than to twitch their lips knowingly. Everyone’s felt the need for a little privacy with a donor now and then. It isn’t until he starts up the second flight of stairs until he’s faced with a challenger.

 

Cassidy. Now Jared makes the connection, he can smell traces of her on Jensen’s body. She’s the one who brought him in last night. She looks like she had a good night of hunting, her face is flush and Jared can see her pulse throbbing along in her neck, veins gorged with fresh blood. She must have found Jensen after she’d already fed, and taken him home to save for later. Ah, too bad, so sad. Finders keepers, losers weepers.

 

He’d always gotten along with Cassidy, hunted a few times with her, but he won’t hesitate to do what he needs to keep Jensen. She steps toward him, pupils narrowed to deadly slits, and reaches out.

 

“I—” she snaps her lips shut and snatches her hand back when Jared bares his fangs and hisses at her. “Fine then, whatever. Help yourself. Plenty more where that came from.”

 

Jared’s glad she doesn’t put up a fight. Probably because she’s fed. Still, he doesn’t move an inch, just watches her silently as she’s forced to walk around him to continue down the stairs. He waits until she’s out of sight down the first floor corridor before he resumes climbing the stairs.

 

The bedroom is empty, as he suspected it would be. There are two large dormer windows that face south, and the blackout shades never seem to work right, letting in chinks of sun that knife through the dark shadows no matter how many times they’ve been repaired. Jared steps carefully around the late afternoon beams where they dissect the hard wood floor and lays Jensen down on the bed with a thump The red velvet bedspread is dusty, but still plush and luxurious beneath Jared’s hands.

 

He climbs onto the bed and kneels on the far side of Jensen, facing the door. Okay, that’s the first task; finding somewhere to keep Jensen to himself until nightfall. That gives him about four hours to wait.

 

It won’t be easy. He’s hungry. He’s starving. His blood feels like dust in his veins, a bunch of dried out red blood cells drifting around in the wind his empty heart makes when it feebly beats every few minutes. His fingers tremble as they trace the trail of Jensen’s veins, up his forearm, down his neck. The luscious, pulsating one that skims over the flat planes of his lower abdomen.

 

Maybe just a taste. Just to see what it would be like. Test himself. Because if everything works out the way he wants—and it will work out the way he wants, he’s not a vampire for nothing you know—he’s going to have to hold back often.

 

He extends his fangs and deliberates. The neck is definitely a no-go. He wants a sip, not a drink from the garden hose. Jared holds up Jensen’s wrist, palpitates between the tendons to tease out the antebrachial vein. He brings it to his mouth, but holds back. Brushes his lips lightly over the skin, feeling Jensen’s pulse teasing him. He darts out his tongue, tastes the residue of sweat, feels microscopic grains of wood fiber lodged between the pores, and that other thing that had eluded him earlier: paint, and paint thinner. Not house paint, which is what he might have expected from a carpenter. More like something an artist might use. Huh. Whatever.

 

He can’t do it, because he won’t stop. He has to wait. Go out and feed, then come back and sample Jensen when he has more control.

 

Jared sits back on his heels and takes a deep breath, steeling his nerves. Fine, if he can’t eat, there are other ways to entertain himself. He sets about exploring Jensen’s body more thoroughly. He pushes Jensen’s t-shirt up, yanking to get it up in the back as well. He fits his fingers over Jensen’s ribs, committing the span to memory. Jensen’s sternum fits perfectly under his palm, and if he spreads his fingers, the tip of his pinky brushes over Jensen’s nipple. It responds to his touch, contracting and firming.

 

Encouraged, Jared turns his attentions lower. He works open Jensen’s jeans and slides his hand in and pulls Jensen’s sleep-warm and fatly soft cock out into the cool air of the darkened room. It hardens slightly under Jared’s palm. He leans forward and takes it into his mouth, feels the soft texture of the skin on his tongue, tasting the sweat and faint bite of Irish Spring. He fools around a bit, licking, tasting, sucking, but Jensen is too deeply under to respond, even reflexively.

 

Jared unbuttons his own jeans and pulls out his own achingly hard cock. He hasn’t fed in months, but he hasn’t had sex for even longer. As tempting as Jensen’s blood is, that’s not the only thing that has him hungry. Jensen’s body— it just seems like it fits with Jared’s.

 

Having sex with a completely unconscious donor is… logistically difficult at best. He’d rather wait for that part of his plan. But he doesn’t need to actually have sex with Jensen to at least take some of the edge off. He places two fingers gently over the faintly throbbing pulse on Jensen’s wrist. His own heart struggles valiantly to match the pace, but it’s too worn out, gone too long without a recharge.

 

Instead, Jared pulls Jensen’s hand between his legs, so his exposed wrist lines up with the underside of Jared’s cock and holds it there with his long fingers wrapped around them both. He can feel the thrum of Jensen’s pulse there, snaking down the length of Jared’s sensitive nerves like lightning.  He thrusts along it, lightly at first, so that the skin between them vibrates slightly with each beat of Jensen’s heart. But before long Jared is gripping Jensen’s forearm tightly and rutting hard up against his wrist, his fangs dripping with venom that tastes bitter and numbs his tongue.

 

There’s so little fluid in his veins, he’s not sure he’ll be able to come; feels like he’s going to turn inside out trying though. Every throb of Jensen’s pulse pulls him closer, dragging on his nerve fibers, driving him onto a frenzy. He can’t ever remember being this hungry, wanting to feed this badly and holding back. Thankfully, there’s no particular reason to hold back his orgasm. His hips lose their rhythm, grinding erratically as Jared falls forward, opens his mouth and wraps his lips around Jensen’s throat as he comes. Where his body came up with that much fluid is a mystery. It feels like it goes on forever, shooting out heat and wet between them, making a mess of their clothes and the bedspread.

 

After he catches his breath again, after he’s stilled on top of Jensen, and his body is quiet enough for him to feel the deep base thrum of Jensen’s heart rumbling under his sternum, he glances at his watch. Okay, so only 3 hours and 56 more minutes until sundown.

 

He gets up and tiptoes around the blades of sunlight that divide up the room, looking for something to clean up with. In the end, he just pulls his shirt off over his head and uses it to swipe off his stomach, Jensen’s wrist and that spot up there by Jensen’s chin. He balls it up and tosses it in the corner. Only 3 hours and 55 more minutes to go.

 

He looks around. No TV. No books. There are a couple of paintings on the wall, but they’re utterly uninteresting; portraits of old white guys in powdered wigs. He looks up. Duh, the ceiling. What did he think he’d find?

 

Jared remembers what the older vampires say about sleeping, and how it helps pass the time. Maybe that could work. He lays down next to Jensen, and listens to his breathing again. Lets his hands roam over Jensen’s body. Petting, Fondling. He nuzzles his nose into the short, silky hairs behind Jensen’s ears, inhaling his scent, wondering at what thoughts are playing out just on the other side of that skull. This is not helping. He looks at his watch again, 3 hours and 49 minutes to go. He sighs, and flops back down onto the bed.

 

It’s no good. He can’t stop looking. He props his head up on his elbow, wondering what the draw is. It’s not only that Jensen smells delicious, otherwise Jared would have just feasted right down there in the pantry and been done with it. It’s more like he wants to _have_ Jensen. As in the second part of _have your cake and eat it too._ But why? He can’t quite put his finger on it. Jensen isn’t so different from a thousand other donors that have passed through the nest, but he makes _Jared_ feel different.  

 

By the time the last ray of evening-golden sun fades from the room, Jared is pacing, compulsively extending and retracting his fangs, and snarling at any sign of footsteps outside the door. At last, he hefts Jensen over his shoulder and heads out of the house.

 

After the minor annoyances of grabbing a shirt, finding a car, remembering how to drive (it’s been a while), navigating the traffic and finding Jensen’s street without a map, Jared is ready to crawl out of his skin. He keeps on looking over at Jensen, slumped down in the passenger side, and telling himself that it will all be worth it. Just a bit longer now, a soon as he finds Jensen’s house.

 

1600… 1624 … There it is. 1642. Jared stares a moment, gaping at the place where Jensen lives. Most of the houses on Jensen’s street are non-descript; two-story raised ranches, contemporaries, the occasional McMansion thrown in for good measure. And then there’s Jensen’s house.

 

Even in the dark, the house stands out from all the others on the street. It looks like something straight out of some sort of mixed up fairy tail, with intricately carved… the only word he can think of to describe them are… buttresses… but he seriously doubts he really knows what that word means. Anyway, there are all these crazy beams and shit sticking out from the front of the house, meeting at a point somewhat above the second story of the house. There’s some sort of lighting aimed at the house that throws speckles of light all over it like constellations in the night sky. The windows and trim have star and moon shaped cutouts, and everywhere Jared looks, he sees surprising little details that he’s never seen in a house before.

 

He shakes his head. Maybe at some later date, when he’s not ready to chew his own god damned arm off, he’ll come back out here and admire the crazy, but not now. He slings Jensen over his shoulder and heads for the porch.

 

The lock presents no difficulty to him, Jensen had his keys in his front pocket, and wasn’t that a delicious slice of special hell, reaching in there to retrieve them. All that Hollywood crap about vampires needing to be invited in? Bogus. In fact, almost everything that’s common in vampire stories is nothing more than devices to give people hope in a hopeless situation. Jared was used to doing what he wants, without limitations. He wants to get into Jensen’s house, so he’s getting into Jensen’s house.

 

Inside the house, the things he had smelled on Jensen’s skin—wood shavings, paint, paint thinner—are even stronger. But he doesn’t have time to poke around. He’s frantic. Crazed. It seems impossible to him that less than twelve hours ago, he was sleeping, blissfully unaware of his body’s desperate need to feed.

 

Jared flops Jensen down on the first piece of furniture and turns without waiting to see how he landed. Jensen should be unconscious for another couple hours. Jared only needs a couple of minutes, tops, to get done what he needs to do.

 

He hits the sidewalk and picks a random direction. He can sense people all over the place, so it doesn’t matter which direction he chooses. In less than a block, he sees his mark. Doesn’t take time to note age, gender, anything. All he can see is a walking bag of blood. He lengthens his stride and with one swift motion, wraps one arm around the person and hauls them into the bushes. This time, forget the garden hose, he’s going for a god-damned _fountain_. He’s torn off the head before they even hit the ground and drinks. Deep, satisfying gulps, warm and salty down his throat. He can literally feel it hit his bloodstream, race through his arteries like a lightning strike.

 

For a while, he does nothing but drink deeply, not even having to work at it, just letting the still beating heart of the… man, he sees now… pump the blood down his waiting gullet. When the tide begins to ebb, and his veins no longer itch with the fire of dehydration, he stops to take a breath. Looking around with a clearer mind, he sees that he’s lucky he hasn’t been spotted. He drags the man a little deeper into the shadows and goes to work.

 

He finds the man’s wallet and pockets it. He’ll turn the credit cards in at the nest later, but for now, the point is to remove any identifying information from the body. Just a little something to let the trail get a bit colder before it leads back to this neighborhood. It’s bothersome that he tore the head off like that; it makes clean up that much more of a pain. But damn, he had been hungry, and this is the price he has to pay.

 

Half an hour later, it’s been taken care of. Body loaded into the car he’d driven Jensen home in, dumped off in a distant neighborhood, car dumped off in another. The owner of the car might be briefly implicated in the murder if Jared’s spilled any blood in it, but chances are, whoever it is has already called the police and reported the car stolen. That might help their chances some, but when it comes down to it, Jared doesn’t really give a shit.

 

Now that he’s not quite so frenzied, he has time to take a good look at Jensen’s house when he enters. Really, it reminds him of an old time sailing ship—all beams and brass fixtures. Or maybe a church; in the kitchen there’s a large stained glass window with a twelve-pointed star, white on a blue background with the words, _if your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme_ written around the outer edge.

 

 

He follows his nose towards the back of the house, and discovers at last what his senses had been hinting at until now: Jensen’s workshop. His woodworking shop, to be precise. Jensen may be a carpenter by day, of that Jared is still sure—you don’t get a tan like that if you’re holed up in a workshop all day—but in his spare time, he’s a wood carver. No. Artist. Maybe there’s a word for it, Jared doesn’t know, because he’s never seen anything like this before.

 

There’s all kinds of crazy animals carved out of wood and painted with—Jared peers closer to one piece—designs or tattoos or something. A dozen or so things that look like marionettes at first glance hang in a row from a beam, but closer inspection reveals them to be carved entirely out of wood, “strings” and all. There’s puzzle boxes, and strange pieces of furniture, and things that Jared can’t even put a name to. Some painted, others decorated only with the color and grain of the wood Jensen’s carved them out of. The floor is strewn everywhere with shavings, some almost as large as Jared’s palm, some as fine as dust. It smells like a pine forest had an orgasm.

 

Careful not to let any blood drip onto the floor or benches, Jared creeps through the workshop, getting nosy and checking it all out. So cool. He keeps meaning to turn around and leave, but his eye will catch on just one more thing. Eventually, the ticking of the (all wooden) clock in the corner reminds him that Jensen won’t be unconscious forever, and he needs to wash up.

 

Jensen’s shower is _awesome_. Two shower heads, one on each end of the stall. The walls release a rich cedar scent as the steam penetrates the wood. As Jared suspected, there’s a virtual chemist’s shop of beauty care products lined up on the shelf. Jared uses generous helpings of the shampoo and conditioner; six months of sleeping in a pile of the undead doesn’t do any favors for your hair. When he’s cleaned and exfoliated and moisturized and all that, he wraps himself in one of the fabulously fluffy and generous-sized towels Jensen has piled around, and sets about to exploring the rest of the house.

 

Jensen lives alone, although Jared had already suspected that, there’s no other scent here but Jensen’s. All the rooms besides the workshop are modest, an open plan between the kitchen and living room, a loft bedroom and that fabulous bath, plus a guest room adjacent to the workshop. Jared pokes through Jensen’s mail a bit, notices there are no condoms or lube in the nightstand, spends a little more time poking around in the workshop now that he’s not dripping gore all over the place. Yeah. He could live here.

 

He isn’t kidding even himself. The place could have been a crack den, complete with three-month-old spaghettios rotting in an open can on the counter, and he would have thought it was just fine. He glances at Jensen, sleeping on the sofa. Yup. Anywhere would have been fine.

 

You see, he’s been doing this all wrong. The bingeing and gorging, and then sleeping for months on end. There’s no point in living forever if you’re not really going to live. What he needs to do is have a steady, consistent supply of blood, enough to keep him alive, but not so much that he checks out like he’s been doing. Jared can keep Jensen alive indefinitely, or at least until he loses interest.

 

Jared runs his clothes through the washer and dryer he finds in the basement, puts them on, then goes and kneels by Jensen. Something is pulling on him, and now that his basic needs have been met—he’s fed, he knows where his next meal is coming from, he’s even had more orgasms in the past fourteen hours than he’s had in the past year—he stops to examine what it is. What’s so compelling about Jensen, what makes him feel more alive than he’s felt since he was turned, thirty or so years ago now.

 

All he knows is that it’s more than just hunger. He can hardly wait to taste Jensen, it’s true, but it’s more than that. He can’t wait for Jensen to wake up.

 

Speaking of tasting, it’s half past two. Cassidy’s vapor will probably keep Jensen out until four, at least. There’s plenty of time. Jared eases Jensen’s arm off the sofa and strokes the wrist with his fingertips. He can feel everything: the arteries and veins nestled among the tendons, but also the finer, smaller branches of the blood vessels. Rather than just one pulse, he feels a throbbing web of life.

 

Jared brushes his lips against Jensen’s wrist, tastes a faint trace of himself there, and hums in pleasure. Those things go together- Jensen’s skin and his scent. His tongue darts out to taste as well, so sweet. He can’t hold back any longer. His fangs sink in only just past the skin; he has very fine control now that he’s not so damned hungry anymore. The taste that spreads over his tongue is…

 

Huh. Kinda ordinary.

 

The tang of iron, the salty, meatiness of it, just, pretty much run of the mill. A little low-fat for Jared’s tastes actually. Wow, what a bummer. He’d been looking forward to this for, how long? More than half the day, way longer than he’d hold out for most things. He had thought… well, he had thought it would be something more than this. He’s frankly embarrassed to realize that he thought it would kind of be like, oh god, Edward and Bella. Like Jensen’s blood would be like heroin to him, something like he’d never tasted before, and then after that, he would never want to feed off of anyone else.

 

But it’s not like that. And strangely, it doesn’t change anything. He takes a few more deep pulls, letting the blood flow over his tongue, thinking. He still wants Jensen for himself. Interesting.

 

He’s really not hungry, so Jared seals off the punctures with his tongue and places Jensen’s hand back alongside his hip. Sits back and waits, touching Jensen here and there compulsively. Before long, Jensen’s sleep becomes a little more shallow and he twitches now and then, eyes tracking back and forth beneath the closed lids. Then, just before dawn, he wakes.

 

There’s the usual bit of disorientation, and Jared watches disinterestedly as Jensen rubs his eyes a bit before opening them and looking around in confusion. When Jensen’s eyes open for real however, and light on Jared first thing, he feels a jolt that’s more like he expected from Jensen’s blood. For a moment, it feels like Jensen is really _seeing_ him. Seeing him for what he is, what he’s done. His eyes are so brightly green that Jared can see them even in the low, pre-dawn light. They don't ask questions, like Jared was expecting. Instead, Jensen gazes at him levelly.

 

For a few breathless moments, Jared is almost ready to apologize and slink the hell out of there. He opens his mouth, trying to find words that are unfamiliar and foreign to him, but Jensen saves him the trouble.

 

“Christ, what the hell happened?” Jensen asks, attempting to push himself up to a sitting position, but then letting his head fall back onto the cushions. “And who the hell are you?”

 

That’s it. Jared’s on more familiar ground now, this is more like what he was expecting.

 

“Man, you were really trashed,” Jared answers. “I took you home, I hope you don’t mind,” Jared looks Jensen right in the eyes, and _pushes,_ just the slightest bit. It won’t take much, he knows from experience. “I stayed.”

 

Jensen throws an arm over his face, hiding his eyes under his forearm. “Nah,” he says, “don’t mind. But… that just doesn’t sound like me. Really? And what did you say your name was?”

 

Jared kicks himself, remembering how he could still smell minty fresh breath beneath the whiskey vapors when he first caught scent of Jensen. But really, for most people, there’s no other good explanation for being unconscious for an entire day and night. He shrugs. “Sorry man, I don’t know what to tell you. Name’s Jared. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.” He pushes again, a little more insistently this time. “We were, uh, getting along great and then I realized that it wouldn’t really be fair of me to make a move on you in the state you were in, but now…”

 

It’s not really fair, and there’s a tiny part of him that wishes he could have been brave enough to see if he could do this without any help, but he’s been waiting for too fucking long. Jensen’s eyes don’t close as Jared leans in, not until Jared’s lips brush up against his, and then he’s all in.

 

 

Oh, yeah. That’s the stuff. Jared presses his lips insistently against Jensen’s, and Jensen opens willingly, running his hands up the back of Jared’s arms, pulling him in closer. Jared obliges, crawling up on top of Jensen. It’s not what he’s used to. Usually, he’s taking, giving little thought to whether his victim is a willing participant or not. Because really, if he starts worrying about that, then it’s a slippery slope to questioning _everything_ about himself.

 

Jensen though, he’s humming happily into Jared’s mouth and rocking his hips up into Jared and pulling on the waist of his jeans. When Jensen opens his mouth, Jared fills it. When Jensen grinds up against him, he pushes back, falling into a long forgotten rhythm that lights him up in ways he hasn’t felt in a long, long time

 

Jensen threads his fingers through Jared’s hair, his breath coming fast, his lips close to Jared’s ear. “Hey, Jared, I hate to be the one to put on the brakes here, but do you have anything? I don’t.” He doesn’t stop rolling his hips under Jared’s body and Jared is tempted to give him another little push when Jensen works his hand down the back of Jared’s jeans and pulls Jared tighter up against him. Jensen’s not going anywhere. Jensen’s just as needy as he is.

 

Of course he is. Jared just made him that way.

 

“Don’t worry about that,” he whispers into Jensen’s ear, pushes a little harder, and slides his jeans down and off, pulling back to give Jensen room to do the same. When they’re all good and situated skin on skin, Jared hesitates. Because he’s never really thought of this as _rape_ before. Never really cared if he hurt what was underneath him, or tore, or out-and-out destroyed a person’s back door because nine times out of ten he fed afterwards, and when he didn’t he left them for dead anyway.

 

But this time, there’s going to be an after. And if he’s going to be in this for longer than a couple of nights, it’s probably better to leave Jensen in one piece. He slots his cock up against Jensen’s and wraps his long fingers around the both of them. Jensen groans and throws his head back.

 

Jesus Christ. His neck. His damn carotid artery, pulsing _right there_. Jared strokes his fingers down just over the surface of their skin, not applying any pressure, just to see Jensen arch his back, his neck straining up towards Jared that much more.

 

He can’t help himself. He leans forward, letting his weight trap his hand between Jensen’s cock and his stomach, and runs his tongue over the spot where the pulse is strongest. Feels it throb against his lips. Ruts up against Jensen with that same primal beat. He runs his free hand up along Jensen’s ribcage until it rests level with his heart, and the vibration travels through his fingers and cascades along his nerves until his whole body is thrumming with the tidal pull of Jensen’s blood.

 

They’re a slick mess between them now, sweat and precome and it feels so, so good, like everything Jared feels during a feeding frenzy. Autopilot. Complete surrender to his baser instincts. His fangs extend, unbidden, and pierce the skin of Jensen’s neck, flooding his mouth with salty tang. Jensen hisses in pain, and it’s all over for Jared. He’s shooting off into his own hand, and drinking deeply the spray that pulses into his mouth.

 

Jensen’s muscle lock, one hand knotted into Jared’s hair, the other gripping Jared’s hip as he comes. Jared can smell the bitter scent of Jensen mixing with his own, feels the fresh swirl of Jensen’s blood racing through his veins. He seals up the breach his fangs created and kisses the spot between exhalations that aren’t strictly necessary, but make for a good show.

 

He smiles into Jensen’s neck. He’s going to like it here.

 

When Jensen has caught his breath, he says, “Who did you say you are again, Jared? I don’t remember seeing you—“

 

“I’m a friend of Tommy’s,” Jared ad-libs, “from college.”

 

Jensen frowns slightly, then waves it off. “Stay as long as you need to.”

 

++++++++

 

Jensen has a couple more hours to sleep before he really needs to get up. After Jared makes a circuit of the house, pulling down the shades, he spends some time in the workshop, sometimes fingering the delicately constructed pieces, sometimes just standing and staring, trying to figure it out. Who _does_ this? There’s thousands of hours of work here, all created because Jensen looked at a blank and saw something more beautiful inside.

 

Jared holds a tiny carved hummingbird in his palm. Brings it up to his face, inspects the miniscule etchings that bring the feathers to life. He thinks back to the window in the kitchen; _no request is too extreme._ Think of that. Once, Jensen’s mind had requested this hummingbird, and Jensen’s heart and hands had said, _sure thing._

When Jensen comes out of his morning shower, he asks, “who did you say you were out with last night?” and “Is that somebody I know?”

 

Jared has a little bit of experience with this, although just a little. Normally, he’s long gone before the questions that come after a push start. “You know, that dude Tommy? I lost my apartment in that fire on East Mill Plain last month. I’ve been kind of just staying with friends, but I really need to find a place to settle down again.” _Push._

Jensen doesn’t capitulate right away, but he does stop toweling his hair and looks at Jared appraisingly. “I’m sorry about last night,” he says at last. “And this morning. I’m usually not that… slutty.”

 

There’s only four wide floor planks between them and Jared crosses them in two steps, tugging at Jensen’s towel and pushing at his mind. “That’s not how it is at all,” he says, nuzzling into Jensen’s neck. “I feel like there’s something going on here too. Something worth taking a chance on.” _Push._

Jensen pulls back, but not exactly to put distance between them, more like he wants to see Jared better. His mind is fighting the pushes, and he’s trying to work through why he’s thinking the things Jared is making him think. Standing there in his freshly scrubbed skin with steam still rising off his shoulders, Jared can’t help but think of Jensen as something newly made, naïve. But his mind is stronger than he looks.

 

Fortunately, third time’s the charm. When Jared inclines his head slightly for a barely there press of his lips against Jensen’s, he pushes one last time, and that’s the one that does it.

 

“You could move in here,” Jensen murmurs against Jared’s lips.

 

Jared can’t help but smile.

 

++++++++

 

Jared has no idea what to do all day. Normally, he keeps feeding through the night until he’s completely sated, and then sleeps. But that’s the whole point of this Jensen thing. He wants to avoid getting so blitzed on blood that he doesn’t care about life anymore. A little blood each day. That’s the plan. Just stick to the plan.

 

It makes him feel edgy and irritable though, to be up during the day like this. And there’s nothing to do. He spends a little time on Jensen’s computer, dicking around on the web, trying to come up with a fake online career he can claim, but gives up. Maybe Jensen won’t ask, and if he does, Jared will just push a little. No biggie. He clicks through the channels on the television, but everything he sees is mind-numbingly boring.

 

He’s not hungry, exactly, but he’s restless. Wants Jensen right there just _in case_ he gets hungry. Except, that might not be it, exactly. He wants Jensen there, but it’s not only about feeding off him. Frustrated, Jared gets up from the couch where he’d been lounging and heads back into Jensen’s workshop. This is what Jensen does in _his_ free hours, maybe there’s some sort of clue in here. Something that will help Jared understand what he’s looking for, what he hopes to get from Jensen.

 

Jensen has left his mark on everything in here. Jared can sense the nearly imperceptible traces of the oil from Jensen’s fingers on the surfaces he’d touched. His eyes can trace the whorls of fingerprints on wood. His scent is thick and heady in here, where he sweats over his work. Jared is starting to think that maybe Jensen tastes better than he originally thought. Maybe it was just that he had recently fed, because now, the memory of that taste is making a home in the pleasure center of his brain.

 

By the time Jensen gets home, Jared is climbing the walls. Jensen smells like sweat and iron nails and sawdust, and it’s all Jared can do to keep from attacking him right in the door way. As it is, the sun is still setting, and the wedge of light that follows Jensen through the open door holds him back.

 

“Hey,” Jensen says, and he looks almost as relieved to be back here with Jared as Jared is to see him. Getting bitten can have that effect, it’s a bit addicting. Or so Jared’s heard. He’s never really kept a victim around like this before. “Did you get your stuff?”

 

“Tomorrow. Tommy was at work today.” Jared fumbles around in his mind for something to say. He hasn’t spoken to anyone for longer than six months. He thinks back, trying to remember if he’d spoken to anyone the last time he was awake, before this long sleep, but probably he hadn’t. So it might be more like longer than a year. He supposes people talk about things, he remembers talking about things when he was human, but he can’t really remember about what. “Like you,” he adds.

 

“Like me?” Jensen is in the kitchen now, unpacking his lunchbox and thermos.

 

“At work, right?” Jared feels a little bit like a housewife, asking her husband how his day at the office was. Think, think. What did people talk about? He doesn’t want Jensen to ask him questions about his life, but he wants to know _everything_ about Jensen. Mostly, he wants to know how he can make Jensen feel about him the way he feels about the things in the workshop.

 

“Yeah, building an addition on a place down near Gastown.”

 

“Surprised they could get a permit,” Jared laughs. At the nest, they would have to fight city hall if they even wanted to change the paint color on the house, historical landmark and all that shit. Fortunately, none of the vampires give a flying fuck about the color of the house.

 

“You’re telling me.” Jensen cracks open a beer and tilts his head back, drinking deep.

 

This isn’t working. Jared cares about two things right now. Feeding, which isn’t really a priority right now, and getting off. All this talking, and drinking, and having to go to work stuff is making him feel impatient. He’s beginning to see what the older vampires were talking about when they said that sleep passed the time. So much of the day is filled up with things that just don’t seem that important.

 

“You eat yet?” Jensen asks, opening the fridge.

 

Case in point.

 

_Not yet,_ Jared thinks. “Uh, yeah, I went out for something.” Jared knows Jensen needs to eat, but the thought of waiting while he eats and then who knows what, does the dishes or something, that just doesn’t seem reasonable. He’d like to bend Jensen over the kitchen island and fuck him silly and get a hit off his blood and then do the same thing a couple dozen times before Jensen has to leave for work again the next time.

 

Jared doesn’t know how humans stand it. It strikes him that he was human once, and at the time, he loved his life. He’d been a student when he was turned, and he vaguely remembers caring about stuff, like his grades and learning, and what the future held for him.

 

He looks at Jensen. There’s something here he’s missing. Jared can feed any time he likes. He can take Jensen any time he likes, mold his thoughts and manipulate his desires. And that doesn’t feel like enough. He wants more. But he can’t quite _get_ it.

 

“Show me your workshop,” he says.

 

A million watt smile spreads across Jensen’s face. “Did you check it out?” he asks Jared, closing the fridge with a finality that suggested dinner would be forgotten for the time being. He doesn’t wait for Jared to answer.  “Come on, I’ll give you the tour.”

 

The way Jensen moves suggests that he’d been tense in a way that Jared hadn’t picked up on before. Now, the contrast is obvious, his gait loose and eager like a kid coming off the bus on the first day of summer.

 

“I built this place myself,” Jensen says, gesturing around. “I got to design the workshop myself, down to the last peg.” Jensen’s hand lingers on the lintel as they pass through; it’s carved with rabbits leaping over the moon, the grain of the wood marking tribal patterns in their fur.

 

“I never… I never did all those things that cost money—college, marriage, kids, all that—so this is what I did instead.”

 

Jared nods, but he’s not really listening. He’s watching Jensen’s fingers, how they touch everything reverently. Watching the soft glow in Jensen’s eyes. Sensing the uptick in serotonin coursing through Jensen’s bloodstream.

 

“Look at this.” Jensen picks up a very fine chisel, and runs it a hair’s breadth over a block of wood that’s on the bench. Half of it is still a rough blank, the other side is taking shape as one half of an open book. The shaving that came off it is a paper thin curl that Jensen picks up and places in Jared’s palm. “I’m that much closer to my goal on this one. It’s that much closer to matching what’s in my head.”

Jared looks around the workshop. All this came from Jensen’s head. He himself has two, maybe three thoughts knocking around his head, and they’re always the same, feed, fuck, sleep.

 

Suddenly, he knows what he needs to do.

 

++++++++

 

The Blue has been around for as long as Jared has been a vampire. From what he understands, it was around a lot longer before that, but he’d never noticed it back when he was human, despite the fact that it’s in one of the trendiest neighborhoods in Vancouver.

 

The bartender casts him a dirty look as he walks in. Although there are more than the average number of supernatural clientele in the joint, The Blue has never been particularly welcoming to vampires. Some shit about killing their repeat business, blah, blah blah. Of course it could also be the fact that if a vampire is in The Blue, it’s not to spend money. They don’t drink, they don’t eat. So, to be fair, nine times out of ten if a vamp is in the place, it’s to make trouble.

 

But Jared’s not here to cause trouble tonight. He’s looking for Dinwiddie. Last he knew, she was holding court in the basement, running an illegal poker game. Now see, if The Blue wants to ban someone, it ought to be the fairies. First, for their monopoly on stupid names—Dinwiddie, what kind of name is that?—and second for the fact that you could never quite be sure if you were being glamored or not. He’s pretty sure that Dinwiddie hasn’t paid for a drink in years, not with real money at least.

 

It’s altogether too loud for him here, what with the Sex Pistols blasting over the sound system and all the drunks trying to be heard over one another. Eyes follow him warily as he makes his way through the crowd. Danneel the Kitsune and Genevieve the Were-Cat slink through the crowd, sniffing the air in his direction before approaching.

 

“We’ve been looking for you,” Danneel says, letting her tail run down the back of Jared’s thigh and curl around his knee. Genevieve doesn’t say anything, she never does, but she brushes up against the other side of Jared as she walks, close enough so that he can feel her purring. He’s dealt with them before, they’ve got dollar signs for eyes and vampires have a reputation for having money that they have no use for.

 

He brushes by them. He hasn’t got the time nor inclination to party with them, and since he’s really planning on going AWOL from the next, he’s going to need every cent of the money that was in the wallet from the donor he killed.

 

“We can see you’re looking for something,” Danneel says, mincing back into place by his side. “Tell us what it is. We’ll help you.”

 

“I’m sure you would.” The tip of Genevieve’s tail strokes Jared’s lower back slightly. She’s trying to desensitize him to the pressure of it so he won’t notice when she lifts his wallet. “But I’m looking for Dinwiddie tonight, and if I’m not mistaken…”

 

The interest extinguishes from their eyes, and they peel away, already scanning the crowd for their next mark. Dinwiddie has a boundary around her into which Danneel and Genevieve are not allowed to cross. A neat trick that Jared wishes he could manage.

 

There’s a sentry posted by the door to the basement stairs, but Jared knows a Yaksha when he sees one and presses a couple gold coins in her hand as he passes. The cacophony of the bar fades behind him as he descends, replaced with the quieter, more intimate sounds of suckers being deprived of their wealth.

 

And there she is. Fairy Dinwiddie, clad in leather and silver, and, ironically, a Ramones concert t-shirt. Her hair is dark as midnight, as are her eyes, which are on Jared the moment he steps into view. There’s a human sitting beside her that clearly has an enslavement charm on him, though he doesn’t seem unhappy about it. He looks like a frat boy who never got the notice that he flunked out.

 

 

“Private game!” some brainless ghoul calls out, but Dinwiddie doesn’t smile at it when it turns to her for approval. She knows he’s not here for her money, or even for a cut of her mark’s money either.

 

“Jared,” she says. She pushes the ghoul’s chair away from the table with her booted foot. “Gary here was just leaving. Weren’t you, Gary?” The ghoul opens his mouth to protest, but then snaps it shut when he sees the pointed way Dinwiddie is looking at him. He gets up to walk away, but she grabs his wrist before he takes a second step. “Your money,” she says, gesturing at a few coins on the table. Fairies might be tricksey, but they get no joy from cheating the stupid.

 

Vampires are, for the time being at least, the apex predators in North America. Theoretically, they can feed on fairies, but good fucking luck catching one unawares. The only reason that fairies don’t claim the top spot is because they aren’t predators. They _do_ have nearly omnipotent powers at their disposal. No one knows the limits of what they can do. They probably rule the fabric of space and time as well as the New York Stock exchange. Maybe even public radio. Again, no one knows.

 

The point being that she knows his name, even though they’ve never met. He knows her by reputation only. For his own part, he’s a nobody vampire, he’s never done anything to put his name on her radar. This is her way of warning him; she’ll have the upper hand in all of their dealings.

 

“Take a seat,” she says, gesturing to the chair vacated by the ghoul. “Shall I deal you in?”

 

Jared shakes his head. “I came to ask for your help.”

 

She side-eyes him as she deals the cards to the remaining players. “Vampires don’t need help for anything. You’re looking for a grant, not aid.” The human next to her smirks.

 

Jared doesn’t give a shit what she calls it, as long as he gets what he came for. “I want to become human again,” he says.

 

The room falls silent, and the baseline from the bar over their heads marks off the long moments. Five pairs of eyes stare at him. Well, six if you count the second pair of eyes that beast at the end of the table is unsuccessfully hiding in his pocket. Then the human starts laughing and they all turn back to their cards.

 

“Hit me,” says the demon on the left, throwing down two cards. Dinwiddie throws two at him. The beast takes two as well. Jared knows the second demon at the table, but can’t remember his name. He’d like to tear the smile off his face and feed it down his throat.

 

“I’m serious,” Jared says, and he can’t help himself; he flashes his fangs at the smirking demon.

 

“Hey, if you want to trade places, I’d gladly—”

 

“Shut up, Chad,” Dinwiddie says. It’s then that Jared notices she’s not laughing along with the others. She’s eyeing him appraisingly instead. “Why?” she asks.

 

Jared shrugs. “I’m bored of it.”

 

Then she does laugh, and turns back to her game. “You vampires,” she says, her lips curled into an amused smile. “You think you can have anything and everything you want, and yesterday is never too soon for you.”

 

“Yeah,” Jared says, “So? What’s wrong with that? Are you saying we don’t deserve it?” He winks at her, only half joking.

 

“You’d be happy as a human for about five seconds… raise, 600,” she says as the betting comes around to her. “And then you’d be back here, begging me to take it back and that,” she says, giving him a withering stare over her hand of cards, “would be really annoying.”

 

“And you _don’t_ want to annoy Dinwiddie,” the human says, holding up his wrists, which are faintly glowing with enchanted shackles.

 

“Shut up, Chad.” The demon on the left says it this time.

 

“ _If_ I wanted to become a vampire again, which I won’t, I wouldn’t need to come to you for that.”

 

Dinwiddie raises and eyebrow. The beast at the end of the table folds, then the demon on the right in turn. Chad raises. Dinwiddie looks dangerously close to being annoyed at him.

 

“We’ll see about that,” she says. “But what’s in it for me?”

 

“One less vampire,” Jared says, knowing she has no love for his kind.

 

“Too true,” she says. She raises again and glares at Chad, who folds obediently, if out of turn. The left demon is all in, so he calls, and throws his cards down on the table when he sees Dinwiddie has beat him Queens and Jacks to his tens and threes. He slinks away from the table and heads up the stairs, grumbling about the last time he’ll ever…

 

“Fine,” Dinwiddie says unexpectedly. “You’re right. One less vampire, no skin off my nose.” The beast reaches for the deal, puzzled that she hasn’t passed the cards over. “But,” she says, a wicked glint in her eye, “you have to take Chad.”

 

“What?” both he and Chad say in unison. They eye each other in mutual disgust.

 

She shrugs. “You’re bored of being a vampire, I’m bored of him.”

 

“So let me go!” Chad says in what Jared assumes is a rare moment of sincerity.

 

“What am I going to do with him hanging around me all the time?” Jared asks. He doesn’t know Chad, but if Dinwiddie is bored with him, and yet doesn’t want to just get rid of him and release him back into the population, that can’t be a good combination.

 

Dinwiddie snaps her fingers and Chad disappears. “Game’s over,” she announces to the two remaining players. Jared doesn’t watch them leave, he’s distracted by a high pitched…. _chirping_ noise coming from the place where Chad had been sitting. He looks at Dinwiddie, who in answer to his unasked question, reaches down and plucks a small, black cricket off of Chad’s seat. “Now, he’s in disguise,” she says. “No bother at all.” She frowns a little, then snaps her fingers again.

 

The chirping stops, and now Jared can hear Chad’s human voice again, only smaller, and squeakier.

 

“…of all the god-damned-son-of-a-bitch-and-bastard-wand-waving-pains-in-my-ass. What the ever loving fuck now??? What is this shit?? You make one tiny, misguided attempt at having sex with a mermaid, and this is what you get. What am I? Some kind of bug? This shit sucks. WHEN you turn me back and let me go, you had better fucking mind wipe this entire experience right the fuckety-fuck out of my head because I never, and I repeat, never want to remember this. So help me when I—”

 

Dinwiddie turns her attention back to Jared. “It _wasn’t_ a mermaid,” she says. “Trust, me, you don’t even want to know.” She gently places the still-ranting Chad-cricket onto Jared’s shoulder.

 

He looks at it dubiously. “Really?”

 

“Look, you want a favor from me. I need a break from him. Being human again isn’t going to be easy, he can help you figure it out again.”

 

“So you’ll do it?” Jared asks. He thinks, for the first time, of Jensen, back in his house. Of what it will be like to experience him on his own level. To feel things like Jensen does, like he himself did, once.

 

“Sort of,” Dinwiddie answers, which is just typical.

 

You would think with all that power, that fairies would just _do_ shit. But no. Everything with them has to be complicated. Look at this poor cricket on his shoulder. If he had crossed a vampire, he’d have been a blood smear on the sidewalk, end of story.

 

“Meaning?” Jared asks, not really wanting to know.

 

“I’ll take away your powers, and you’ll be… _more_ human. But you’ll still be immortal. You’ll have to earn your mortality.”

 

See? That’s the kind of stupid shit fairies were coming up with. There’s no way he would want to earn the right to die. He’ll take the human-ness _and_ the immortality, thank you very much. “Sounds good to me,” he says, trying to sound casual, just in case she thinks she’s being too generous and changes her mind. He’ll figure out a way to ditch the cricket later.

 

“All right,” she says, pocketing her cards and pulling together her winnings. “It will take effect as soon as you cross the threshold of The Blue. There are enough people here who would love to take a crack at you without your powers, Kripke wouldn’t appreciate that kind of hell letting loose in his bar.”

 

They both stand to leave, and she casts one last look over her shoulder at him before she walks away. “And _don’t_ lose the cricket.”

 

Jared knows enough not to mess with that look. As they’re walking up the stairs, he has a thought. What if he’s so good at being human or whatever that he accidentally “earns” mortality? He really, really wants to avoid doing whatever that would be. He’s so busy trying to phrase the question in a way that doesn’t make him sound like a complete douche-canoe that he doesn’t notice Fairy Dinwiddie disappear into the crowd. He cranes his neck around, looking over the heads of everyone, but doesn’t see her.

 

He does see Danneel and Genevieve headed his way though. They’ve been drinking, and they’ve lost any hint of subtlety they ever possessed. Genevieve’s ears have taken on a distinctive point and Danneel's canines are showing.

 

“Hey! I know those two chicks,” Chad squeaks on his shoulder. “They’re always fun.”

 

Jared groans and plucks Chad off his shoulder, shoves him into his shirt pocket. He’s lost hope of finding Dinwiddie again, and the last thing he needs is to deal with is Danneel's idea of fun with a human.

 

“Heyyyyy, Jared,” Danneel says, blocking his way to the door. “We know where there’s an epic party going down. Come join us?”

 

“Bonzaiiiiiiii!!” Chad shouts and cricket-leaps into Genevieve’s cleavage before Jared can stop him.

 

Danneel steps back. “You’re infested,” she says in disgust. Genevieve just smiles dreamily and strokes Chad gently with the tip of her finger. Jared’s close enough now that he can see the shimmering gold ring around her irises. She’s been doing pixie dust, it’s going to take a lot more than a talking cricket to bring down her high.

 

Chad does a little happy wiggle and burrows deeper into the cleft.

 

“I’m just watching him for Dinwiddie,” Jared says, unsure how to get him back. He is _not_ about to reach in there himself.

 

“Ah,” says Danneel, dropping her act and showing the intuition her species is known for. “Then you’d better take this back.” She reaches into Genevieve’s shirt with two fingers and plucks Chad out. She drops him unceremoniously into Jared’s outstretched palm. “Good luck with that.”

 

++++++++

 

 

The first thing Jared notices once he is out in the street is the rain. Not that he hadn’t ever noticed rain when he was a vampire, but it had been reduced to just that one word, rain. All of his finely-tuned senses had been directed at finding prey and feeding. Everything else faded into the background. He had ceased to notice anything _about_ the rain. He’d stopped noticing how rain could smell fresh and feel like icy shivers down the back of his collar. He’d forgotten how the wet streets smeared the colors of the traffic lights and neon signs into rainbows in the puddles. He turns his face up into the sky and feels the big, wet splashes on his skin. It’s not like he had really _missed_ this, he just hadn’t given it a second thought. But it was good to know that his instincts had been right; that he had been missing out on a lot of things.

 

“Dude, what are you doing?” Chad chirps.

 

“Trying to see if I still have fangs.” Jared opens his mouth wide and squeezes his facial muscles, straining to extend his canines. “Is anything showing?”

 

“Just your dumb-ass face, looking like you’ve got a pretty bad case of constipation right here in the middle of the street. Pull yourself together, man.”

 

“Pff. You’re one to talk. How’s the cricket thing working out for you so far?”

 

For a creature with no fingers, Chad sure does a pretty good impression of flipping him the bird. But he’s got a point. People are starting to stare. He starts off down the sidewalk, and casually puts his fingers on his throat. His jugular is full and pulsating heartily. She did it. Dinwiddie really did it.

 

An hour later, as he’s still slogging through the suburbs on his way towards Jensen’s, he remembers why he didn’t miss this at all. He’d lost his wallet to Genevieve after all and had no money for a cab; he’d never had a phone. The rain isn’t cool and refreshing any longer, it’s cold and heavy. His clothes are wet and chaffing. Chad won’t shut the hell up.

 

“Your giant, rock-hard muscles are crushing me. I have this distinct feeling that insect legs aren’t as firmly attached to their bodies as human legs are. This sucks. No! Don’t take me out. It’s worse out. Raindrops are like fucking water bombs. This sucks. I don’t know why you didn’t just let me stay back there with Genev…”

 

Jared pulls his jacket closer around him, drowning out Chad’s irritating squeak. The feel of his little insect legs wiggling around in his pocket is creepy, but better than listening to him bitch and moan.

 

He’s discovering some other things he forgot about being human too. Like eating. He’s starving. Literally. He doesn’t think the blood that he’s eaten over the past 30 years really counts. His stomach feels like a rock, hard and aching in his gut.

 

When he’d found Jensen’s house the first time, he’d relied on that innate sense of direction, primal and true. Now, he has a vague sense where that section of Vancouver is, but no idea how to get there. Thankfully, Chad does. He pops his head out of Jared’s pocket every so often to tell him to turn right or go straight or whatever. He assures Jared that it is indeed within walking distance, just not within fun walking in the rain distance.

 

By the time they get to the right neighborhood, Jared is trudging, his heavy, sodden boots are like dead weights soldered to his body, and every inch of him is trembling with cold and exhaustion. Even Chad has stopped his ceaseless complaining.

 

The house looks like the best friggin’ thing he’s ever seen in his life. It’s probably close to three in the morning, so most of the interior lights are out, but there’s a soft glow from behind the stained glass window that he can see as they approach from the back. The star patterns of the exterior lighting shine through the rain, and Jared wonders if Jensen left them on for him.

 

And here’s the biggest thing. He hadn’t always been a massive, selfish asshole. Back when he’d been human, he was kind of a nice guy. Friendly. Generous. He’d been in college, studying to be a victim’s rights advocate. One time, when the one of the cafeteria workers spilled a pan of beans and franks all over the floor, Jared had helped him clean it up. He was a decent human being.

 

That decency had lasted approximately five hours after being turned. The hunger he had felt was so great that it overshadowed everything else. Jared isn’t sure if it was the hunger that made him not care, or if the not caring was a coping mechanism that allowed him to feed that hunger, but either way, he had never once looked back. Never once felt guilt over what he was doing, never questioned who he had become.

 

Until now. Jesus. What he’d done to Jensen was the least of his sins, and he is having a very, very hard time thinking about crossing through that doorway and looking Jensen in the eye. Forget the whole plan about saving him for later to _eat_ , he’d also raped him. Jensen was only a willing participant because Jared had made him into one.  

 

Chad pokes his head out of Jared’s pocket. “What’s the hold up, dude? This the place?”

 

Jared nods, but doesn’t move, despite the fact that not moving is making him colder and wetter, something he wouldn’t have believed possible.

 

Chad swivels his tiny head, looking between Jared and the house. “Let me guess. The guy in there didn’t know you were a vampire, right?”

 

The rain splattering all around them serves as Jared’s answer. Or maybe Chad doesn’t need an answer.

 

“You probably weren’t the most upstanding citizen when you were a vampire either. So now, you don’t know how to—”

 

“Yeah, something like that,” Jared answers.

 

"Okay, fine, but you got any place else you can go? I’m guessing not, otherwise we wouldn’t have put ourselves through all this crap to get here. So just go in. Do your best. This is your new start. You didn’t think it was going to be easy, did you?”

 

Actually, Jared did. Think it was going to be easy, that is. Or maybe he hadn’t really thought it through at all. He had found something he wanted, and didn’t stop to think there might be reasons why he couldn’t have it. That was it. But here he was, and he really, really hoped he wouldn’t be saying this too often, but Chad is right, he has no other place to go.

 

Maybe that is just too fucking bad for him. Maybe that is the consequence he has to pay for what he's done, and if he thinks about it, it's an extremely small consequence considering more than thirty years of it.

 

As he's standing there, considering this, the door opens.

 

“Jared?” Jensen calls out to him. “Get your wet ass in here. What the heck are you doing out there like that?”

 

Jensen hasn't just left the light on for him. He's been up waiting for him. The right thing to do is just walk away. Jared opens his mouth to say something, anything, but Chad squeaks in his ear. “Come on, man, we’re freezing our balls off here. Go in, get dry, we’ll figure out what to do after that.”

 

He doesn't deserve it, Jared knows that, but the cold and his hunger are making it hard to resist. For three decades, he's been letting his appetites drive his behavior, and he's seriously out of practice taking the moral road.

 

And there is something else. He’d pushed Jensen to have sex with him. He hadn’t particularly cared whether Jensen liked him or not, he hadn’t pushed Jensen’s emotions at all. So he can't quite imagine why Jensen has stayed up waiting for him. He walks up the sidewalk, and steps inside.

 

“Jesus, Jared, what happened? Why didn’t you call, or take a cab or something like that?” Jensen pulls Jared’s wet coat off him as Jared stands there, shaking, too numb to move.

 

“I lost everything,” Jared says, and it’s probably the first true thing he’s said to Jensen, even though Jensen won’t understand it that way.

 

“Right, okay, okay. Lets get you into the shower, warm you up. You’re shivering all over.”

 

“I’m hungry,” Jared says, and inside, he’s cringing at how pathetic he sounds but he’s at the bottom. This is not a position from which he can pull himself up by his bootstraps. Either Jensen will help him, or he’s done.

 

“Shower first,” Jensen says. “I’ll fix you something while you’re in there.”

 

Jensen must be some kind of bona-fide genius when it comes to fixing people who have been out in the rain, because the shower is _exactly_ the right thing. Jared wouldn’t have thought that he’d want to keep on being wet, but the stinging needles of scalding hot water on his skin go a long way towards making him feel like he’s alive again. Even after he’s mostly warmed and all the way cleaned, he slumps down wall and sits, knees to chest, letting the warm water wash over him.

 

Chad sits in an overturned shampoo bottle cap like it’s his own personal cricket-sized hot tub. “Sooooo,” he says slowly, as if tact isn’t a trait that comes naturally to him, “how bad were you?”

 

Jared rests his forehead on his knees. “Pretty bad,” he says. “The worst part is, I feel like I did way back before I was turned. I don’t feel connected at all to who I was when I was a vampire. It’s not like I was doing all this terrible shit and then learned the error of my ways. It’s like, yesterday I was this murdering ass-rapist, and— _bam_ —today I’m so totally not. I can’t wrap my head around it. I can’t make excuses that make sense even to myself. How can I face Jensen?”

 

“You ass-raped him?” Chad asks, casting a completely obvious glance between Jared’s legs.

 

“No, not that, exactly.” Jared admits. “But bad enou—”

 

“And you didn’t murder him either. Everything else is just mistakes. And if you ask me, it doesn’t sound like you can really be held responsible for them. You’ll work it out dude.”

 

Jared stares at him, hard. “This,” he says at last, “this is why you were shackled to Dinwiddie and now you are a _bug_. That is the shittiest—”

 

“Jared? You talking to me?” Jensen opens the bathroom door a crack. “You okay in there?”

 

“Yeah,” Jared says, scrambling up to standing once more. “Just getting out.”

 

“I made a fire,” Jensen says, “and one of my famous peanut butter and fluff toast sandwiches. I don’t think my clothes will fit you exactly, but you can try these.” Jensen shoots a handful of pajama bottoms and t-shirt blindly through the bathroom door.

 

Jared towels off and tries without success to think of what he can possibly say to Jensen when he leaves the sanctuary of the bathroom. In the end, when he comes out and sees Jensen sitting there, his face anxious and concerned, and apparently feeling all kinds of things that Jared definitely does not deserve, all he can say is “Thank you,” and for the time being, that seems to be enough. The warm peanut butter and fluff oozing through the layers of crisp toast and the heat coming off the crackling logs—a couple more reasons why being human again is good, and he’s strangely glad that Jensen is here with him to share these things.

 

“You want to talk about it?” Jensen says after he watches Jared devour two of the sandwiches in silence.

 

This is his in. This is where he starts his human journey, by admitting his mistakes, and asking for forgiveness. But he can’t do it. He can’t. For one thing, most humans, with certain cricket-sized exceptions, are unaware of the presence of supernatural creatures among them and revealing this secret only ever works in movies. In real life, forget it.

 

For another, it’s just too much. You can talk with a friend about your insecurities, about mistakes you’ve made, about decisions you have to make. You can’t talk about your decades-long crime spree as a vampire.

 

Jensen just waits, doesn’t push or pressure. He’s working on something with his hands, absentmindedly carving a small wooden rabbit out of a piece of dark cherry.

 

“I’ve really made a mess of my life,” Jared says at last. “I made some really terrible decisions and done a lot of things I’m not proud of. And now here I am, with this chance to start everything over, and I don’t even know the first thing to do.”

 

The fire crackles in the silence between them. After thinking on it a while, Jensen answers, “One of the reasons I have the fireplace is for burning up my mistakes. See that bin there on the left?”

 

Jared looks. Next to the fire is a bin full of various size chunks of wood. He had assumed that it was kindling the fire, but now that he looks, he sees that the wood grains are fine, and soft, just the right sort of thing for carving, like the piece Jensen has in his hands.

 

“When I finish one figure, sometimes I’m happy with it, and sometimes I’m not. If it’s not good, I throw it in the fire, if it is good, I keep it. Either way, I have to start something new. And look. All the blocks are more or less the same. It’s up to me to decide what I want to come out of them.”

 

“No,” Jared says. “I’m serious. This is like…” he casts around in his mind to think of anything that could even compare to the train wreck that he is right now, “…like I threw the whole bin of blanks into the fire, and now I don’t have anything to start new with”

 

Even as he says it though, he hears where he’s wrong about this. _He_ didn’t throw himself into the fire. He’d been walking home from the library one night when a vampire got him. He’d woken up with Alaina and Shepherd holding a dripping neck over his mouth, letting the blood trickle down his throat, according to them, because he “looked fun.” He’d never had a choice.

 

“So,” Jensen is saying, “you have to hope someone gives you something to work with.”

 

“Why are you doing this?” Jared asks. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

 

Jensen ducks his head and tries to hide a smile. “Maybe I have a type,” he says, "and when I woke up with one of them sitting next to me, it was easy to fill in the blanks that I didn’t know about you and stick in some things that I wanted to be true.”

 

“What type is that? Homeless bums?”

 

Jensen doesn’t try to hide his smile this time, and it turns into a laugh. “No,” he says. “More like…I don’t know. Someone who’s confident, knows what he wants. You were that all over. But also… I’ve been in some relationships where I always had to be the one to take care of things, maybe because of my job, how I fix things or something. But _you_ took care of me. That was nice for a change.”

 

“Jensen, I have to tell you, that wasn’t me. I—”

 

“Well, it wasn’t exactly like me either, but let me ask you this. If you had to do it again, would you? Take me home, watch out for me like that?”

 

“Of course, but—”

 

“But nothing. Don’t be one of those people who’s afraid to think good things about themselves. I had a feeling about you, and I was right. So. There’s where we start.”

 

Jared begins to protest but Jensen cuts him off. “It’s late. Whatever your deal is, you can’t solve it tonight. Let’s go to bed.” He stands, and walks towards the stairs. “You coming?”

 

Chad whisper-chirps in Jared’s ear, starling him. He had almost forgotten about him. “Are you crazy? Look at that ass. You go get some of that.”

 

He pushes Chad into the pocket of Jensen’s borrowed hoodie; the closest non-verbal thing he can come to “shut up, Chad,” and stands there, feeling weak. He wants so badly to believe everything Jensen has said. That it really can be that simple. Wants so badly to go lay with Jensen in his arms, feeling his heat and hearing his heartbeat without turning it into something sick and twisted.

 

In the end what makes him cave is the realization that he doesn’t have any other options. He could stay on the couch, maybe leave tomorrow and figure out what to do, but walking away from Jensen and his offer of a new start feels impossible.

 

The bed should come as no surprise to Jared; he’d seen it the day before, when he was still a vampire. Today though, he really _sees_ it. It’s carved in what he is quickly coming to recognize as Jensen’s signature style, which is to say, more detailed and intricate than you would think a normal human could put into something as unyielding as wood. The headboard and foot are beautiful cresting waves, and somehow the grain of the wood has been manipulated to add to the texture and motion of the water, and—

 

And Jensen is taking off his shirt. Which completely stops Jared in his tracks, because, damn. Chad gives a low whistle from where he’s peeking out of the hoodie pocket. All of a sudden, it hits Jared. Why he’s here, why he’s doing this.

 

He remembers seeing Jensen in the… oh, God… _pantry._ How even then, Jared was drawn to him, wanted him. But that was universes away from what he’s seeing right now. Then, he had seen Jensen as someone who could fulfill his needs. But it hadn’t taken long for him to realize that there was something more there. Something that he couldn’t quite wrap his predatory brain around. And this was it, right here in this one frame. Jensen undressing, open, giving, trusting. Jensen’s bed, showing his incredible skill and passion.

 

Even his body. As a vampire, Jared had been aware of his physical beauty, how Jensen’s muscles fit together over his bones in pleasing ways. Now Jared could see the imperfections as well, and how they made Jensen more beautiful. How his hands were callused and tough, how his legs bowed slightly. There were crinkles at the corners of his eyes that were no doubt well-earned. It crushed Jared’s heart, how little he deserved this.

 

Jensen glances over and smiles at Jared, who’s frozen in the doorway. Something, doubt, guilt, maybe just disbelief in the entire situation must show on Jared’s face, because he says, “Come on, I don’t bite. If it makes you feel better, I’ll pretend we haven’t already had amazing sex and we can just take it slow.”

 

Jared startles when Jensen mentions having had sex. It seems like that happened to a completely different person. He’s not going to pass up the invitation though, he sheds the hoodie and climbs into the bed when Jensen holds the covers back. He ignores the muffled but indignant chirping from the direction of the floor.

 

“It’s late, I have to be to work in just a few hours,” Jensen says, his voice soft and so close to Jared’s ear. He’s worked an arm under Jared’s neck, and his bare skin is comforting against Jared’s cheek. It had been forever since anyone had touched him in this sort of quiet, welcoming way. Forever since he’d touched anyone for _their_ sake rather than his own.

 

He reaches out his hand and tentatively slides it across Jensen’s ribs, around his side. Jensen hums in sleepy pleasure.

 

Only twenty-four hours ago, he’d bitten Jensen, fed off his blood. If he reaches up to Jensen’s neck right now, or runs his fingertips over his wrist, they would find the all but imperceptible marks where he’d pierced Jensen’s flesh with his fangs. The idea is bad enough; worse is thinking how he is lying here now, Jensen so trusting, and Jared can’t even begin to ask for forgiveness for the things he’s done.

 

He has to find a way.

 

++++++++

 

Jensen is gone from the bed when Jared wakes up. It takes a moment of disorientation before Jared realizes that it really isn't a bad thing that the whole house is full of sunlight, and another few to remember exactly where he is. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, hadn’t really thought about how he’d need to do that now, like, _daily._

Chad is nowhere to be found, and Jared relishes the chirp-free silence of the morning. Except it’s not altogether silent, he realizes. There’s a sound coming from downstairs, a tapping noise, metal on metal.

 

He wanders down the stairs, following the faint sound of hammer on chisel and finds Jensen in his workshop. His bare feet make no sound on the polished wood floor, and Jensen doesn’t look up when Jared leans against the doorframe. He watches there, waiting for the sleep to clear from his brain, but he feels rough, like he hasn’t slept in years.

 

Jensen’s working on the book, the muscles in his forearm flexing, the movement of his hands tightly controlled. The wood peels away obediently in golden curls, as fine as a princess’ ringlets in a fairytale. Jared remembers how those same hands had skimmed over the skin of his back the night before. He has a strange mental image of Jensen shaping him into something finer than he was before.

 

A yawn forces its way out of Jared’s mouth, and Jensen looks up at the sound. “Hey, sleeping beauty,” he says, his voice as soft as balsam. He motions Jared into the workshop and gestures toward the book. “Thought I’d get in a little time with this project before work. It’s for the children’s library in Pemberton. What do you think?”

 

Jared rubs the sleep out of his eyes and studies the pages that curl up, impossibly delicate at the edges from the rest of the book. The wood seems no thicker than an actual sheet of paper. “It’s magic,” he says.

 

“Perfect,” Jensen says, looking pleased. “that’s exactly what I was shooting for. I want it to be something the kids want to see whenever they go. Something they can’t see anywhere else.” He shaves another hair’s width from the page. “I’m going to inscribe the top pages,” he says, eyes back on his work, “but I can’t decide what to put on there. What was your favorite book when you were a kid?”

 

Fifty years. Jared is something like fifty years old. His childhood seems so far away, and visible only through a blood soaked filter. He hadn’t spared a thought for his past in so long, it felt like exercising a long neglected muscle.

 

Jensen backpedals. “Whoa. I’m sorry, I know we weren’t going to talk about your p—”

 

“No, that’s okay,” Jared assures him. “I actually remember my favorite book quite vividly. It was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

 

“Who can resist?” Jensen smiles. “Chocolate river? Lickable wallpaper?”

 

“Actually, it was Willie Wonka himself that did it for me,” Jared says, feeling heat rise to his cheeks. Huh, there’s a sensation he hasn’t felt in years. “I liked how he had all these crazy ideas, and a lot of them didn’t work, but the ones that did, man, he had to dig down beneath the factory to make it big enough to hold all of them. I loved the thought of someone with all that stuff jamming around in his head and then actually making… them…” Jared trails off. Jensen isn’t looking at him, and he’s glad, because suddenly, the workshop with all of Jensen’s beautiful work is making him feel a little like his heart is being squeezed a little too tight. “…and all he wanted was to share it with someone.” _With Charlie, as it turns out_ , Jared thinks. A kid who might not have survived if it weren’t for the miracle.

 

“That would be a great idea,” Jensen says, smoothing away the finer particles of sawdust that cling to the carving. “Something familiar to everyone, something fun, with heart.” He puts down the chisel and brushes his hands off on his jeans. “Hey man, you look like you need about three more days of sleep. I gotta go to work, but you should go back to bed, okay?”

 

Heart in his throat, Jared nods. As Jensen steps away from the workbench and passes him on his way toward the door, Jared puts out his hand and catches him by the hip. Pulls him close. Tries and fails to summon up some of the confidence that Jensen had said he was attracted to. “Thank you,” he says when nothing else will come.

 

Then Jensen’s hands, are on his face, light and rough, and Jensen’s eyes search his like they had the morning before, as if he can see the real Jared and all he’s fighting so hard to keep hidden. Jared has to close his eyes, because he’s afraid the guilt will show. He’s shocked to feel Jensen’s lips brush his own.

 

This. This is what he had wanted. Even through the blackness that had taken over him, he had wanted this. He’ll figure out a way to deserve it later, but for now, he kisses Jensen back, his gut twisting with doubt.

 

Thank goodness for golden tickets.

 

++++++++

Judging by the slant of light through the windows when he wakes the second time, it's nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. If Jensen’s at work, then he should be home any time now. Jared needs to dress, eat, and get his thoughts sorted out if he is going to face Jensen in the daylight.

 

“Dude, do you even _know_ what crickets eat?” Chad asks, hopping onto Jared’s chest. “I am very sorry to say that thanks to my bug instincts, now I do. And it’s not pretty.” He lets out a tiny, but still disgusting cricket belch. “The upshot is that lady crickets are real cowgirls. And by cowgirls, I mean—”

 

It’s a blessing really, how being so tall helps mute the sound of Chad’s chirping when Jared stands. Food first, then strategy.

 

Jensen left him a note in the kitchen: _more PB and fluff in the cabinet, help yourself. Will be back with real food around 5 or 6. –J_

Shit. That hardly leaves him any time. He has to figure out what the heck he's going to do with his life, and how he's going to make up a past that didn’t involve a thirty year gap in his history which has left him magically un-aged.

 

He might be able to just claim his old identity. He’d been declared dead, but dental records or fingerprints could confirm that he was indeed Jared Padalecki. Sure, he hadn’t aged, but if being a supernatural creature had taught him anything, it's that humans want to believe whatever is easiest for them to believe. Neither Jensen, nor any other human Jared had ever run into noticed that Jared’s vampire pupils were more like vertical slits than round pupils. And now that he even appears to be fully human, he can squeak by.

 

But how can he talk to Jensen about who he was without everything being a lie?

 

For some ridiculous reason, he decides to ask Chad what he thinks.

 

“Try Dinwiddie again,” Chad says, dipping one front foot into the fluff lid and stuffing the white stuff into his face. “She can do anything. This one time, I saw her—”

 

Just then, the door opens, and Jensen comes through, his eyes immediately find Jared’s, as if he’d known before he opened the door exactly where Jared would be standing.

 

“There is no Tommy,” he says, his voice rough with anger.

 

If there’s any way to feel like a bigger jackass than to be caught in a lie by someone while at that very moment making yourself a sandwich in their kitchen, talking to a cricket, Jared does not want to know what it is. He stalls.

 

“What?”

 

“Tommy. I was telling Chris how you had taken me home from his party, and he said that I wasn’t drinking, and that I didn’t leave with you, I left by myself. I asked him about ‘Tommy from college’, and he didn’t have any idea who I was talking about. You made him up, didn’t you?”

 

“Jensen, I—”

 

“And not only that, but your whole story about your apartment burning down? I looked into that, too, and guess what Jared? The apartments on East Mill were _senior housing_ , so I’m pretty sure that either you’re a lot older than you look, or you made that up too. What the fuck, Jared?

 

Jared would like to look down at the counter and avoid Jensen’s eyes, to not see how the green is blazing, but he can’t because if he does, he’ll see Chad ridiculous face smeared with fluff, and then he’ll laugh because he’s so scared and uncertain, and he hasn’t been re-humanized for very long, but even he knows that that would be a very bad idea at this point.

 

So he has to keep looking, and it hurts. The betrayal on Jensen’s face hurts, because this is exactly what he has been trying to figure out a way to avoid. He would have done anything for this not to happen.

 

Except not climbing into bed with Jensen.

 

Because really, that’s where he had gone wrong, made things worse. Before that, it was just barely possible to say that technically, _he_ hadn’t done anything wrong. Everything he’d done as a vampire, that wasn’t him. But last night, Jensen had given him an opening, given him a chance to either tell the truth, or bow out and leave him alone, and Jared hadn’t been able to do either. He took the easy way, the coward’s way.

 

He closes his eyes. He can’t bear to see Jensen standing there trying to steady his breathing and control his anger. Because he deserves every ounce of it. “I’ll leave,” he says.

 

“What? Wait, no.” Jensen holds out a hand, as if somehow he can direct Jared’s emotions like traffic. “I’m not like, g _et the hell out_ mad. This is more like, _here’s your chance, make this right_ mad. Just tell me.”

 

This is why he has to leave. Jensen is giving him yet _another_ chance, and he’s too chickenshit to take it. He can’t tell Jensen the truth, and he can’t keep lying to him. Good thing he doesn’t have anything to pack.

 

“Come on,” he mutters to Chad, and holds open his pocket. “I’ll get your clothes back to you somehow,” he says to Jensen.

 

“This is what you’re going to do?” Jensen asks, incredulous. “Look man, all you need to do is level with me. We can work this out.”

 

“No,” Jared shoots back. “We can’t. It’s so beyond that, there’s no coming back from it. This was all a big mistake.”

 

He’s at the door already, hand on the knob, when he hears Jensen’s voice behind him, for the first time without confidence. “I was a mistake?” he asks.

 

Jared pauses. “No,” he says, kicking himself that even when he’s trying to do the right thing, he’s still hurting Jensen. “ _I_ was _your_ mistake.”

 

++++++++

 

“Umm, Jared, I know you’re not in the mood right now, but Dinwiddie said you were supposed to listen to me and I was supposed to help you figure things out. And I know I’m a bug and all, but I was a human more recently than you, and okay, so I kind of sucked so hard at being human that Dinwiddie had to put me in a time-out, but still. I’m telling you, don’t do this. Go back. You guys can figure it out. Did you even see anything in Jensen’s house? All that wood and shit? He’s one mother-fucking patient dude. Listen. Go into that Wendy’s over there, order some food, then I’ll create a disturbance, and you run out, and we can eat some cheeseburgers and then take some deep breaths and go back and tell Jensen you’re in the witness protection program, or that you’ve had amnesia for thirty years, or anything. His house was warm, and he had food and his face was like, too beautiful for words and all that. You’re not going to score another gig like that out here in the streets. Not in a million years. Look!! You’re going past the Wendy’s! Duuuude!! No! Okay, no biggie, there’s an Arby’s in two blo—”

 

“Shut up, Chad,” Jared says, but there’s no fun in it, because Chad does shut up, and somehow, that’s even worse. But at least it’s not raining. They’re heading in the general direction of downtown, but he hasn’t quite gotten to the point yet where he’s figured out what to do. Approach the police with some story and try to reclaim his old identity, or make up a new one and try and find a job. Chad says it’s not that hard to make a fake ID, and he knows some guys, etc, etc.

 

In the back of his mind, he hasn’t ruled out trying to find Dinwiddie either. Not to ask her to turn him back. Of all the options, that might be the easiest, but, just hell no. He might not have had a choice before, and now he does and he’s not going there.

 

Dinwiddie might be annoyed, hell, Jared himself is annoyed at how right she was. But he’s not a cocky vampire any longer, and that might count for something with her. He doesn’t know what he’d ask her to do, just hopes that maybe she’d know. But then he looks at Chad and wonders _exactly_ how annoyed she would be. Because… life as a bug? Yeah, no thanks.

 

“Okay! So, yes, Jared, you’re a genius!” The excited timbre of Chad’s chirps is like tiny little toothpicks digging into Jared’s brain. He’s hopping around in Jared’s pocket, completely fired up about something. “You sly dog, why didn’t you _tell_ me this is what you had in mind?”

 

Jared looks around, baffled, and that’s when he sees them. Danneel and Genevieve, walking down the sidewalk in the twilight evening, eyes glowing with that perpetual mischief that they never seem to tire of.

 

 

“Why, Jared,” Danneel says. “You’ve changed.” She traces his lip with her fingertip before teasing it in slightly and lifting his upper lip. She widens her eyes in mock surprise. “Tsk, tsk tsk.”

 

Genevieve covers her mouth with both hands in a silent giggle.

 

“Helllloooo ladies,” Chad chirps. Jared looks down at Chad poking his head out of his pocket and he swears Chad is wiggling his antennae suggestively. Danneel takes a step back and Genevieve wrinkles up her nose.

 

“Listen, sweetie, we heard about what happened to you. Such a shame. But, lucky for you, you’re technically still one of us, considering you’re immortal. What you need is to relax and let loose a little. We’re heading over to Sebastian’s. Come with us, have some fun. We’ll show you what you vampires are always sleeping through.”

 

At the mention of Sebastian’s name, Chad perks up. “Sebastian Roché?” he asks.

 

“That’s the one,” Danneel says.

 

Chad hops up onto Jared’s shoulder. “I know that dude! He chirps excitedly. “He’s an angel, which, a) means he’s almost as powerful as Dinwiddie, but more importantly, b) he had this brother, Misha, who was an angel, and then he wasn’t and then he was again, and I don’t even know what he is right now, but the point is, this is a dude who has some experience with your particular problem! He’ll know what to do. Let’s do it. Dude, please don’t mess up my big chance with Genevieve. She’s got the greatest tits, if I play my cards right—”

 

“She can hear you, you know.” Jared stage whispers.

 

“I know. I’m not ashamed. In fact—”

 

“Are you coming or not?” Danneel says, impatiently. She offers her elbow on one side, and Genevieve falls into place on his other side.

 

It would be kind of a relief if he could find a way to solve this mess without having to go crawling back to Dinwiddie.

 

“Let’s go,” he agrees.

 

“Yes!” Chad chirps in victory. “I can’t believe I am finally getting to go to a Sebastian Roché party. I heard this one time, there was this centaur there, and he put on a show with—”

 

“Shut up, Chad.” This time, Jared and Danneel say it together, and Jared is not certain that he likes the idea of being on the same side as Danneel on anything, even this.

 

++++++++

 

It turns out the Roché mansion is not far from the Gastown district where Jared’s nest had been. There are fewer cars inside the gated drive than you would expect, but then again, not all supernatural creatures can drive, or need to. By the time they arrive, in a cab, thanks to Danneel, who wasn’t walking anywhere in heels like that, it’s full dark and the mansion is glittering with light.

 

He’d declined Danneel offer of pixie dust in the cab, but watched Chad snort a hit off the tip of Genevieve’s finger. Now the insect was glowing gold, and proving to Genevieve that he knew all the lyrics to “Part of Your World” from the Little Mermaid movie.

 

“Jared, they seriously are not going to let that bug into this party if you can’t keep his mouth shut,” Danneel warns as they climb the marble stairs.

 

Personally, Jared thinks Jensen’s hand-me-down sweats and hoodie are going to be a bigger problem, but the two demons at the door wave them in, no problem. Danneel ditches him at the door, having found out in the cab that he had no money or drugs on him. She promises to check back on him later and see if he’s become any more interesting.

 

Chad only hesitates a moment before leaping onto the back of Genevieve’s dress, just barely clinging on to the silky fabric that skims over her very shapely ass. He gives Jared a crickety thumbs up as he disappears through the crowd.

 

It’s pretty much the kind of party you would expect from this crowd; Jared can see a cluster of werewolves freebasing angel grace in the corner, a pair of sirens warbling into a karaoke machine to a rapt audience, and more black-eyed demons than he's ever seen in one place, which is strange, considering the host is supposed to be an angel, but who knew? Vampires really didn’t get into politics so there might be some sort of truce or alliance going on that he’s not aware of. The air is thick with fumes and glittering motes float through the air, and Jared tries not to breathe too deeply. He already feels a bit swimmy.

 

 

He needs to find Sebastian, or his brother. He’s not here to socialize.

 

“Pardon me, but are you _quite_ sure you’re at the right party?” a voice at his elbow asks.

 

Jared turns to see a somewhat handsome man in a black velvet smoking jacket holding a bottle of Moet by the neck. The man squints at him, his eyes bleary.

 

“Oh, my mistake, for a moment, I thought you were human. I’m Sebastian, by the way. Welcome. Drink?” Sebastian holds out the bottle, then looks at it, snaps his fingers and produces a glass for Jared.

 

“Thanks, no,” Jared says. “Never developed a taste for—”

 

Sebastian snaps his fingers again, and the glass fills with blood. Jared’s stomach promptly flips over.

 

“Dear, dear, someone _has_ been messing with you,” Sebastian says, “what _are_ you, anyway?”

 

“That’s why I’m here. I _was_ a vampire, but now I’m human, sort of. I’m still immortal, but no powers.”

 

Sebastian winces. “Bad combination, terrible luck, my friend, terrible luck.”

 

“I haven’t even started to worry about that yet,” Jared admits. “The problem is… the transition. Turns out, you can’t really just plop into the human world. I, uh… heard your brother might be able to help me out? Give me some advice?”

 

“Oh, god,” Sebastian says, rolling his eyes heavenward. “He makes one little expedition into the human world, and now all of a sudden he’s everyone’s Maharishi Maresh.” He waves dismissively at Jared and walks away. “He’ll be here a little later. Have a drink and try not to act like such a newb.”

 

Jared _does_ take a drink, and then another. It’s been a while. He drifts from room to room, asking now and then about Misha, and always getting vague replies, _yeah, he’ll be here later_ and _I think I saw that dude around here somewhere_. Before long, he kind of forgets who he’s looking for. The air here is _very_ good, thick and sweet.

 

“Jared!” he hears a tiny voice in his ear. “Check this out. There’s _mermaids_ in the pool!” Chad looks wounded at the dubious glance Jared shoots him after fishing him out of his drink. His very delicious and nerve-soothing drink, which, he thinks, he will have another of, sooner rather than later if he can find his way back to that pink room where they are pouring this. “ _Real_ mermaids,” Chad clarifies. “Jeez, you make one little mistake…”

 

Jared lifts his palm so he can see Chad better. It’s not just his double vision, there’s a row of tiny gold rings pierced through his back leg. They’re pretty. “When did you get pierced?” Jared asks.

 

“Remember a couple of days ago, when that genie was here? Turns out he can make himself very, very small. He did it. Nice work, huh?”

 

Something about what Chad just said feels wrong, but Jared can’t put his finger on it. “Where are your girlfriends?” he asks, looking around. He doesn’t look too hard, because this place is starting to need a maid service or something. At the very least have a dedicated body disposal room. Ghouls just leave their scraps everywhere, Jesus, what pigs. Regardless, he doesn’t see Genevieve or Danneel. Eh, it’s a big house.

 

Chad rubs his back leg over the back of his cricket head. “Uh, yeah, well, Genevieve tried to eat me, so I’ve been steering clear.”

 

“Sounds wise. Listen what did you just say about—”

 

But Chad is already gone. Jared stands there, sifting through the words, trying to grasp what’s tickling his brain, but gives it up after a moment. His thoughts are too swirly, and anyway, he needs a refill on his drink. Or maybe another hit of that djinn dust that’s going around.

 

“Dude, you don’t look so good,” Chad says, startling Jared. He could have sworn he wasn’t in there just a second ago.

 

“You don’t look so hot yourself, Jared says, trying to focus on the cricket in the middle. “What, are you molting or something?”

 

“Yeah, started about two weeks ago. Can’t be over too soon. But really, Jared, you look… your eyes. They’re all black. That can’t be good, right?”

 

Jared blinks. “Black?” he says, slowly, not quite able to put together Chad’s meaning.

 

“Yeah, black like a demon. Look, maybe we’ve been here too long. Maybe we should think about calling it a night.”

 

“Didn’t we just get here?”

 

Chad shrugs, shedding a flake of his exoskeleton. They both watch it as it floats lazily to the floor through the glittering haze that fills the room.

 

“Anyway,” Jared says, “we can’t leave until we find the thing.”

 

“What thing?” Chad asks, picking at his carapace.

 

“You know, the…” Jared finds he doesn’t remember.

 

“Anyway, I came over to tell you that I saw some of your friends here. Thought you should know. There was this one hot chick, tall, blonde, I mean _smoking_ hot, and she took one look at you and turned around and left. What’d you do to piss her off, and seriously man, your eyes are freaking me out. Let’s get outside for some air, okay?”

 

Jared nods, thinking, _friends._ He’s sorry to say that he really doesn’t have any friends, unless you count Chad, and the jury’s still out on that one. Fresh air does sound good though. He’s starting to feel a little… come to think of it, _black_ inside. Maybe there really is something wrong with his eyes. Maybe there’ll be a mirror outside. “Yeah, let’s go,” Jared says.

 

The fresh, undiluted oxygen goes straight to his brain. Jared stands in the cool, twilight air and sucks in big, deep breaths and feels the rush of oxygen hit his bloodstream and clear some of the torpid fog that had been clouding his brain. He looks around, puzzled. Twilight? Had he really been here all night and the whole day? He looks down at Chad, who is shaking off some of his flaking molt.

 

He definitely hadn’t had those piercings before they got here. What did he say? A genie did it a couple of days ago? That he’d started molting a couple of _weeks_ ago? Chad hadn’t even been a cricket a couple of days ago.

 

“What’s that you were saying about my friends?” Jared asks him, trying to pull together the threads of his thoughts.

 

“Yeah, three vamps came through, though they didn’t stay long, just had a little private fuck and suck in one of the upstairs rooms. Except this one girl, the blonde? She looked at you, did a double take and left again. You do something to piss her off? That was stupid. She was hot. Almost made me forget the name of the cute little cockroach I was trying to pick up at the time. If you ask me—”

 

It all comes back in a rush. Tall blonde vampire, that had to be Cassidy, and if the sight of Jared reminded her of anything, it had to be… Fuck. Jensen.

 

How could he have forgotten? The whole reason he’d ended up here. Rapid fire images flash through his brain. The look on Jensen’s face as he stood in the doorway, Jared’s lies carved on his face. Tracing the curve of his ribcage in the warm embrace of Jensen’s bed. Second chances. Frantic, hungry sex. Crouching over Jensen in the upper room at the nest. Staking claim over Jensen when clearly, he had been Cassidy’s kill.

 

 

 

 

He knew how finely tuned Cassidy’s senses were. She would have been able to tell with one whiff that Jensen was still alive and well, and that he was _not_ at the party with Jared.

 

 

All of a sudden, it was really, really important to know how long they’d been there. Days? Weeks?

 

“How long ago did you see the vampires?” Jared asks.

 

Chad is lying on his back, feet up in the air. Passed out cold. Jared stuffs him in his pocket. He turns around and tears back into the house, looking around for a staircase. Chad had said they had been in a private room, upstairs. When he finds the stairs, he takes them two at a time, ignoring the dirty looks he gets from people he jostles on the way.

 

Upstairs, he tears doors open, one by one. He’ll know what he’s looking for when he sees it. Nobody is cleaning up after themselves here, and the vampires will be no exception.

 

Yup. There it is. The room they’d used. Three hookers lie in unnatural poses, two on the floor, one on the bed, her miniskirt hiked up around her waist, and her neck broken. There’s not a drop of blood on the linens; they’d completely drained her. There is a blackened crust around the puncture wounds on her neck though, and her abdomen is swollen with gasses. Two days, three tops she’s been dead.

 

 

He fishes around on the floor, under the bed, looking for their purses. Chances are the vamps left their money untouched. Bingo. One Louis Vuitton knock off flung under the nightstand has a couple twenties floating around in it and a fully charged cellphone. He calls a cab and puts as much distance between himself and the gates of the Roche mansion as he can before he’s picked up.

 

In the cab, he puts the phone on selfie mode and looks at himself. Chad was right, his eyes are black as demon eyes. All those demons he saw wandering around at the party, had they arrived as humans too? He checks the date on the phone. He’d been there a little over a month and a half, apparently too long for a human soul.

 

As the cab pulls up to Jensen’s house, he hands over all the hooker’s money and is out the door before the cabbie’s surprised yelp of thanks finishes. He dashes up the walk, but then hesitates at the door, his heart crashing around in his chest. The house is completely dark, which sends a chill crawling over his nerves.  He’s pretty sure he made the right choice, coming here instead of the nest. Cassidy wouldn’t lose her prey to carelessness a second time. She’d take care of things right where she found him.

 

He lets out a slow breath, trying to think through the possibilities. She might still be here. In which case, Jensen might still be alive, but Jared’s chances of protecting Jensen from Cassidy are nil. As a vampire, it might have been a fair fight, but as a human, forget it. If he’s dead, she might be gone, or she might have stuck around rather than going back to the nest to sleep. So, two out of three scenarios might result in Jared surviving the encounter, but finding Jensen dead.

 

It didn’t matter. If he had to face a live, hungry Cassidy, then that’s what he had to do, even if just to prove to Jensen that he would try. Jared’s life was fucked anyway, nothing to lose.

 

He puts his hand on the knob, but falters again. Puts his forehead on the door, trying to find the place inside himself where he’s stronger than the fear of what happens when he walks through. Because there is no happy ending here. Jensen’s gone, no matter what, and it’s hard to work up the courage when there’s no point.

 

“It’s not easy, but you have to,” says a small voice on his shoulder. Chad has come to, and he’s worked his way out of Jared’s pocket. “I know I won’t be able to help at all, but I’ll stick with you best I can.”

 

“It won’t make up for anything,” Jared says.

 

“It will, some.” Chad says. “Maybe not to Jensen, but to yourself, right?”

 

“Yeah, right,” Jared answers, but even he doesn’t believe the words as he says them. No matter what happens in the next few minutes, he will never forgive himself. Ever.  

 

But he opens the door anyway.

 

++++++++

 

There’s a light switch just inside the doorway, and Jared’s trembling hands fumble with it, pawing ineffectually before he pulls his nerves together and hits it right. The first thing he sees is Cassidy, sitting on the sofa, head back, eyes half closed, her lips half slack and half smiling.

 

The second thing he sees is Jensen, sprawled out with his head on her lap, one arm loosely draped across her shoulder. Eyes open and blank, he is, without a doubt, dead.

 

Even as Jared feels his chest crumpling, caving inward, he realizes that this is what he had fully expected to find, and he came through the door anyway, so there must be a reason.

 

“Jared,” Cassidy slurs. Then she seems to forget what she was going to say, and her eyes slide closed. A moment later, she opens them again. “Totally worth waiting for,” she says. “But I don’t know why you made me go through all the trouble, you barely fed off him at all.”

 

Jared is paralyzed. Cannot take his eyes off of Jensen’s slack form. There’s a terrible sense of the inexorable forward push of time. Every second passing dragging him forward, away from the moments when he could have done something differently.

 

Cassidy stands up, and Jensen’s head lolls over the side of the sofa. That unsticks his feet. He darts past Cassidy and moves Jensen gently back onto the cushions. His skin is cooling, but not cold. There’s no pulse or breath under Jared’s hands. No going back. No fixing this.

 

Cassidy watches dispassionately, and stifles a yawn.

 

“Just go,” Jared says. “You’ve had your fill, if you’ve got a thing for me, come get me later. But just go.” He can’t take his eyes off of Jensen’s chest, how absolutely still it is, when his own chest is squeezing so violently.

 

“Nah, we’re even. I always liked you, Jared. Besides, demon blood is too bitter for my taste.” He can hear her steps, light even though she’s completely drunk off a feeding. She passes through the still open door, but then pauses.

 

“It’s not too late,” she says. “He hasn’t been dead long, I could turn him. And you, if you like. I can see there’s…” she waves her hand vaguely back and forth between Jensen and Jared, “…something going on here. If you really wanted him, you could have him forever.”

 

Jared remembers being a vampire, understands why this might seem like a totally reasonable option to Cassidy. He remembers all that _not caring_. As a vampire, there was literally zero guilt about who he was, what he did. It’s actually uncharacteristically _nice_ of her to offer this.

 

And wouldn’t it be good, not to feel this? To not feel this guilt, this pain? He imagines the long sleeps with Jensen, bloodstream full, conscience clean.

 

No, he prefers the other choice for oblivion.

 

“Just go,” he repeats.

 

“Suit yourself,” she replies, and walks out into the night.

 

Without turning around, Jared walks three steps backward and closes the door behind her. And that’s when he breaks. His legs won’t hold him and he finds himself sliding to the floor.

 

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers to the empty room, words barely able to squeeze from his throat. He pushes himself up and takes a step and a half towards Jensen and goes down to his knees again. “So, so sorry.”

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Chad crawl up to the back of the sofa, blessedly silent for once.

 

Jared can’t help it, he puts his head on Jensen’s chest, hoping against hope that there’s something there, even the faintest beat of life, but there’s nothing. He places a hand on Jensen’s chest, and there’s no rise and fall, there’s nothing. He runs his hand over the places where he can touch Jensen’s skin, ghosting his fingers over the contours of his form, and still, there’s nothing. It’s like touching one of the wooden figures in Jensen’s workshop.

 

 

“Jared, why didn’t you…?” Chad trails off. “I totally wouldn’t have blamed you,” he adds, like an afterthought.

 

Jared doesn’t want to think about why. He doesn’t want to think about the alternative that he chose either, so he stands, and picks Jensen up in his arms. It’s not easy to carry one hundred and seventy-something pounds of dead weight up the stairs, but Jared ignores his screaming muscles and he brings Jensen to his bed.

 

For a while, he doesn’t think about anything. Doesn’t think about whether he made the right choice, doesn’t think about where along the way he could have done things differently, doesn’t think about what he’ll do next. All he can do is hurt. Hurt for Jensen, and ache for the ability to say something, anything to him. Hurt that there’s just this immovable blank wall where once there was a person giving him a chance.

 

He lies down next to Jensen’s body and places his hand over the place where his heart sits silent as a stone in his chest. Lies in the darkness and lets the tears roll down his face and his whole being just says _sorry, I’m so sorry_ over and over, because there are no other thoughts.

 

It isn’t until the room begins to lighten with the morning sun that he becomes aware that there’s someone else in the room with him.

 

Dinwiddie. She sits in a chair in a corner of the room, watching him without words, arms crossed over her chest, face inscrutable.

 

Jared scrambles up, and off the bed, thinking he’s really in fucking trouble now. “I’m sorry,” he stutters, “I didn’t know you were there.” Which is a colossally stupid thing to say, considering all the things he’s _actually_ sorry for.

 

She doesn’t answer him right away, and they’re both momentarily distracted by a strange faint noise from the direction of the stairs.

 

“…not his…fault…wait until you hear...what he…did”

 

It’s Chad, trying to talk and hop up the stairs at the same time.

 

“I don’t need him to tell me what you did,” Dinwiddie says. “I know.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Jared says again. “I don’t know how I fucked things up so badly.” He turns his away as his face breaks up. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again to Jensen, though he must have said it a million times in the night.

 

“Ah, well, Padalecki, you’re only human. If I had wanted you to be perfect, I would have made you a fairy.”

 

“You can do that?” asks Chad. “Because that is some serious mojo, if you can make something as powerful as yourself. I mean, that’s just one step away from making something _more_ powerful than yourself, and then we’re talking like, _godlike_ status. That is—” he looks back and forth at them two of them, “okay, shutting up now.”

 

“As I was saying—”

 

“No, wait. I’m not shutting up. I have to say my thing. All Jared here ever wanted was to make things right for Jensen. Ever since you turned him, he hasn’t thought for once second what would be best for _him. Twice_ he turned down the chance to—”

 

“I know,” says Dinwiddie. “Now, Jared—”

 

“No, you _don’t_ know,” Chad is chirping at the top of his voice now, making Jared’s inner ear vibrate unpleasantly, “because you’ve never been human. You don’t know what it’s like to constantly be choosing between what you want and what is right, and not having it make one bit of difference if it’s something you want with all your heart or not because at the end of the day you’re _still_ supposed to do what’s right. Personally, I just gave that shit up, and look where it got me. But not this dude. No! Jared could have had his happily ever after but he turned it down, stone cold. No take backs, no second chances, no consolation prize. I think it was really shitty of you to go all half-assed on him like that… you threw him into the deep end of the human pool without a paddle and now _he’s_ standing here, saying he’s _sorry._ You’re the one who should be sorry.”

 

“Are you done?” Dinwiddie asks, one eyebrow raised.

Chad cocks his cricket head, thinking about it. “No,” he says at last. “I guess I should say I’m sorry too. For, you know, that thing I did? The thing with the—”

 

“The less said about that, the better,” Dinwiddie says. She turns to Jared. “Actually, I’m pretty impressed. Of all people, you knew how dangerous it was to come back here, and you knew there would be nothing you could do. I really would have thought you’d go for Cassidy’s offer.”

 

“It’s better for him this way,” Jared answers. “I owed him that much, at least.”

 

“But what about you? You could have gone back.” She glances at his eyes. “Things don’t appear to be working out so well for you as a human.”

 

Jared doesn’t answer, just closes his eyes and wipes away the tears on his face.

 

Dinwiddie is silent for a moment and then says. “Well, the cricket’s right, and woe on your sorry asses if you _ever_ tell anyone I said that. I did throw you into the deep end, but you swam beautifully. It’s just lucky for you that I have a certain amount of power to fix things. First things first.” She snaps her fingers, and then says, “Now look at me.”

 

Jared looks at her, puzzled.

 

“Much better,” she says, “now I can look you in the eye without my deep seated distrust of demons affecting my judgment.”

 

Chad springs up onto Jared’s chest. “She’s right dude, that’s much better. Black was not a good look for you.”

 

“Okay, you are not going to appreciate any of this, but I’ll just tell you now on the off chance that you can show a tiny bit of pre-emptive gratitude. When someone comes to me asking for wishes, I give them what they ask for. But when _I_ decide to fix things, I do it right.”

 

“How can you fix this?” Jared interrupts. “I don’t give a shit about being human or being immortal or whatever. I just want to—”

 

“Shut up, Jared,” Chad chirps.

 

“Why thank you, Chad,” Dinwiddie says, nodding in his direction. “First intelligent thing I’ve heard you say.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

Dinwiddie rolls her eyes and mutters something about there being no help for some people. Out loud, she says, “I think we can all agree that there are a lot of elements here that have been seriously screwed up. So I think the best thing for everyone involved would just to be a complete cosmic do-over. Best of luck to you both.”

 

She raises her hand, like she’s going to snap, and Jared has just enough time to hear Chad say “Wha—” before everything goes dark.

 

++++++++

 

Jared wakes up with Chad’s boxer shorts in his face. Again. Seriously, he has no idea how he ended up rooming with someone who, at age 22, still thinks this sort of thing is funny. He snatches the disgusting things off his face and feels around to find the emergency bottle of Purell that he keeps near his bed for these sort of occasions, when he stops.

 

He looks around, trying to put his finger on what’s making him feel all… weird. Like he’s just slipped down a rabbit hole. Kind of like the feeling you get when you wake up somewhere strange and it takes you a while to figure out where you are. Or when you wake up and you know it’s a really big day, but it’s a few moments before the reason why hits you.

 

He’s in his own bed, and everything looks like it’s in place, not like that time when Chad rearranged all his furniture and posters and shit while he was sleeping. He thinks back to the night before. He’d stayed up late studying for his constitutional law exam, there were his books and notes out on the desk, just where he’d left them, but that wasn’t it either.

 

That contractor was going to send someone over today to fix the back porch. Maybe that was it. He’d been worried that he would oversleep and the guy would show up and he’d miss him. Because he was really sick of stepping over the giant black hole of charred decking every time he wanted to go out the back door. Also, he needed to get up and take Chad’s debit card out of his wallet before the little weasel could head off to class and say he “forgot” that he was the one paying for the damage. Again.

 

He gets up and pulls on a latex glove that he keeps near the Purell and picks up the boxers. On the front is a picture of Pinocchio with the opening where the nose should go. Real mature, Chad, real mature.

 

Chad lies snoring on his stomach on top of the tangled up blankets, blessedly wearing a different pair of boxers. Something catches Jared’s eye. “Dude, what did you do to your leg?”

 

“Wha—” Chad leaps up suddenly, hands out in a kung-fu defensive pose.

 

“Look at your leg!” Jared says, the boxers in his hand temporarily forgotten.

 

Chad has to twist around unnaturally to see what Jared sees; five bright gold rings piercing the back of his thigh in a neat row.

 

“Whoa. I am so bad-ass.” Chad says, grinning. “What’s for breakfast?”

 

“Why on earth did you do that?” Jared asks, unable to tear his eyes away from the piercings. He’s never seen anything like it, and it just adds to the general sense of disorientation he feels.

 

“Dunno,” Chad answers. “Don’t remember doing it to be honest.” He scratches his ass absentmindedly. “Except… were we at a crazy party last night? Did I…” He shakes his head. “Nevermind.”

 

“No,” Jared says, “I know exactly what you mean. I feel like… I don’t know. Something’s weird.”

 

“Whatever. That’s how I feel most mornings. A little private time with Pornhub will fix that all right the hell up.”

 

Jared’s not so sure, but as he makes his way to the kitchen, the we’re-not-in-Kansas-any-more feeling starts to dissipate. He’s got to focus on getting Chad’s debit card, not missing the construction guy and passing his exam. In that order.

 

He’s got his head in the fridge, looking for a jug of milk, or juice or something that doesn’t look like Chad has been drinking directly out of it when there’s a knock on the door.

 

“You’re going to get that, right?” Chad hollers from the direction of the computer; he was only kidding about the ‘private’ part of the ‘private time with Pornhub.’

 

Jared is intent on looking through Chad’s wallet and trying to decide which of the seven debit cards he finds in there might actually have a positive balance, so he doesn’t immediately register the man he opens the door to.

 

“Come in,” he says, absently, choosing Capital One.

 

“Hi, I’m Jensen.”

 

Jared’s head snaps up. That voice. It brings all the crazy head-vertigo back and he blinks, but the guy, _Jensen_ , is still there. His heart starts flailing around, probably from all the blood that rushes to his face. He literally cannot remember his own name, nor anything even remotely appropriate to say.

 

By all rights, Jensen should look at him like he’s the dumbest bag of hammers on earth and roll his eyes, but instead he smiles at Jared, the corner of his clear green eyes crinkling up endearingly. Jared falls a little deeper in love.

 

“Don’t I know you?” Jensen says. “You look… no, I guess not. But…”

 

“I’m Jared,” Jared says, finally finding his wits. “Come on in.”

 

++++++++

 

And they lived happily ever after.

 

 


End file.
